


The Way They Lived

by ssrhpurgatory



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hilbert adopts Eiffel, Hilbert is not good at being a dad, Hilbert is not good at being a husband either, I was trying not to bring shipping into this, Implied abuse, Just a lot of Hilbert being really bad at emotion in here, Mentions of Cancer, Orphaned Doug Eiffel, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel Fix-It, Trans Sam Lambert, but goddamn it these two are just weirdly soft and I can't stop it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 02:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 33,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20369032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: At the moment of his death, Alexander Hilbert finds himself waking up in the past, on the day he arrived at Goddard Futuristics.Now, he wants to make sure that all of his crew mates who died on Hephaestus Station stay alive this time around... and he enlists the help of some old friends at Goddard, several of whom were long-dead, to make this happen.(This fic is going to make heavy use of the Terrible OCs I made for my pre-canon Hilbert at Goddard fic, along with relationships established there. You have been warned.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [No Going Back](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19979005) by [ssrhpurgatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory). 

“Minkowski, do you copy? Can anybody hear—?”

There was a light, and a noise so loud that it could only be felt. There was pain, though it did not last, his nervous system overwhelmed in a moment.

And then, he was waking up, groggy and disoriented by the sudden pull of gravity, by the deceleration of the moving vehicle that was carrying him.

“We’re here, doctor.” The sound of Cutter’s voice broke through Alexander Hilbert’s consciousness, waking him the rest of the way up. The world around him was blurry; he put his hand to the side of his face, looking for his glasses, and only encountered his cheekbone. He cast about for them, shuffling through the pile of papers that was in his lap for some reason before checking further afield, and froze suddenly, his gaze locked on the man in the car with him and the blurry shape of another person who was leaning through the now-open car window in his direction.

Since when was Mr. Cutter a blond?

And then the words Cutter was saying to the person in the window impacted on Alexander’s brain, and all of the breath rushed out of him.

“Rosemary. How good of you to meet us.”

Before Alexander had a chance to wonder how Cutter could possibly be talking to a woman who had died more than two decades before, she answered. “It _is_ my job, sir.”

It _was_ Rosemary. He would have known that voice anywhere, that low rasp, that cheerful sarcasm.

Alexander tuned out whatever Cutter’s response was and opened the door to the car, startling the driver, who had been about to open it himself, and spilling half of the paperwork that had been in his lap onto the ground in his haste to disembark. The driver helped Alexander gather the scattered papers up, and a few moments later they were joined by the blurry, round form of Rosemary, who stomped several of the papers into submission with her heels when they tried to escape.

“Dr. Kelley. Welcome to Goddard Futuristics.” Her smile was visible, if blurry without his glasses, and the sight of it warmed him through. “My name is—”

“Rosemary Epps,” he interjected, responding with a smile of his own, an expression that felt so foreign on his face after all of these years.

“That’s right.” She sounded confused. “Did they finally start including staff pictures with the briefing packets?”

Alexander shook his head. “Cutter said your name. In car.” At some point since Rosemary had joined him, the driver had returned to the car and had taken off. Now it was just him and Rosemary, standing outside the old apartment complex he had lived in when he had first joined Goddard Futuristics.

Rosemary let out an uncomfortable little laugh. “Well, you did a very good job at remembering my last name from your paperwork, then. Though not so good on the man who was in there with you. It’s Mr. Carter, not Cutter, you know.”

“I have not yet had chance to read paperwork,” Alexander said. “You have glasses for me?”

“Right, yes!” Rosemary produced a hard case—which she had apparently tucked under her arm while wrangling loose paperwork—and popped it open. “May I?” she asked, holding up a pair of glasses with thick plastic rims.

“Please,” he responded with a little nod.

Some part of him had been insisting that this could not possibly be real, that it must be some dream, some illusion manufactured by Pryce, some hallucination occurring in the instant before his death as his life flashed before his eyes. It was Rosemary placing those glasses on his face that convinced him otherwise. Her fingers brushed his temples, warm and smooth, and her face as she looked up at him…

All of his memories of Rosemary had been corrupted by what had come after. By the cancer. By the choice she had made in the end, the final way in which she had assisted his research. He remembered her looking older than her age, he remembered her weak and angry and falling apart, and if this had been a dream or a hallucination or one of Pryce’s illusions, if he had still been in that chair that had been left for him aboard the Hephaestus, the Rosemary before him would not have been the one his imagination would have conjured.

This was Rosemary as he had first met her, strong and vital and bursting with life, a Rosemary he had forgotten long ago.

But he still wished to be sure.

“What is the date?”

“January 19th. Can I show you into your apartment?”

Alexander shook his head. “No. I would prefer this conversation not be surveilled.”

Rosemary was usually good at hiding her reactions, but it was clear that this startled her.

“What year is it, Rosemary?” He fell without thinking into the casual, intimate tone he had used so often with her over the years, especially at the end, when she had become his patient, a difficult one who had needed coaxing.

“1989,” she responded in a shaky voice. A frown dug deep furrows between her eyebrows. “Who are you?”

“Alexander Hilbert, now,” he said.

“Alexander Hil—no, that's nonsense!” She looked angry now. “You want to tell me why you have one of the code names we use for covert recruits who go into space, or do I need to call security and have them shake it out of you?” Her hand had shoved aside her suit jacket and was resting on her pager, and it was obvious that she was about to summon help.

“Rosemary, please. I have no intention of harming you.”

She snorted and rolled her eyes at that, but her hand came off her pager. “As if you could, skinny little twig of a man that you are. I could knock you over with one finger if I needed to.”

“And you have. It really was unfair of Al to teach you that trick,” Alexander said with a smile that was becoming easier on his face by the moment.

Rosemary’s eyes narrowed. “How the hell do you know—oh.” She blinked suddenly, staring at Alexander. “But you don't look any older than the photo we've got of you, so how does that even work?”

It was clear that she had come to the same conclusion he had. He shrugged. “Aliens.”

Rosemary snorted again. “Be serious.”

“I am. Some twenty-five years or so from now, I was—will be?—aboard a station orbiting red dwarf star Wolf 359. We had come into contact with an alien intelligence. My crew mates and I were attempting to prevent a further contact event. I…” Alexander found himself shuddering at the memory of that light, that sound. “I believe I must have died. And given Colonel Kepler’s usual response to such things, I suspect that my crew mates were not far behind.”

Rosemary remained silent as he spoke, that frown still furrowing her brow, not speaking again until it was clear he was not going to add anything else. “Well that’s just complete nonsense. An alien contact event? Sure, we've found bacteria and such on other planets, but it's not like any of it has had anything like the intelligence necessary for encountering it to be considered a contact event. And there hasn't been any sign of that sort of intelligence out there.”

“It is the truth.” Alexander sighed. “Perhaps Adriane could be of some assistance. I was under the impression that this was not the first time such a thing had happened. As the caretaker of the archives, she would know if it had, would she not?”

Rosemary seemed to be considering this, turning slightly away from him and was staring off into the empty air. “If such a thing were in the archives, it would be in the Black. And nothing comes out of the Black.” Her voice had a slight tremor in it, as if she were barely holding herself together.

“Are you certain? It became clear while Colonel Kepler was aboard that he had access to some files that could have only come from there.”

“All right, maybe, just _maybe_, if you're not talking nonsense with this whole alien contact event thing, and if such proof was in the Black Archives, they might have brought it back out to glean what information they could from it. But that's a big maybe. And that doesn't mean we can get access to it.”

Alexander tilted his head to one side, still smiling at Rosemary. “Come now. Do you truly think that Adriane would not produce such a thing for her Rosmarin?”

Rosemary whipped her head around, probably to glare at him, but it must have been too swift a movement for her in her current shocked state. Instead, she collapsed to the ground in a dead faint.

For all that Rosemary was shorter than him, it would have been impossible for him to have moved her. He suspected that if he had tried to catch her as she fell they both would have been injured in the attempt; after all, she outweighed him by a good twenty kilograms, at least. Fortunately, while it appeared that she had scraped her knee and cheek on the way down, it did not seem as if she had suffered any other injuries in her fall, something he verified by gently rolling her onto her back and checking her over, just to be sure.

Once he was certain she had not damaged herself too much in her fall, he settled cross-legged on the ground and gently lifted her head into his lap before pulling his handkerchief out and dabbing at the scrape on her cheek. After a few moments, her eyes opened in an angry squint.

“What happened?”

“I would guess vasovagal syncope brought on by shock,” Alexander said mildly, dabbing at her cheek again. “Though perhaps it is simply that you did not eat breakfast today.”

She swiped irritably at the handkerchief, and he lifted his hand from her cheek. “I ate breakfast.”

He gave her a dubious look. “Rosemary, as determined as you are to feed every single person who surrounds you, you do a terrible job of feeding yourself.”

“I had a granola bar.”

“That is not breakfast.”

She attempted to sit up, an awkward maneuver with Alexander’s hand still hovering over her face. He moved his hands to her shoulders instead and helped push her upright, amused by her distraught “Oh, this was a new pair of pantyhose!” when she caught sight of the scrape on her knee.

“Mm. You would like hand up?” Alexander was on his feet by now, and offered his hand to Rosemary. She glared at it suspiciously, but took it, using it more for balance than to support her weight as she hauled herself back to her feet.A truly stubborn woman. He had missed that about her.

He had missed her.

“We should go see Adriane,” Rosemary said, dusting herself off. “I believe you when you say you got sent back through time somehow, but I draw the line at ‘aliens did it,’ so I'd like some proof, if it's all the same to you.”

Alexander shook his head. “We should get those scrapes cleaned up. And you should rest, at least for a short while. That was a nasty tumble.”

“I'm fine.” She took a step forward and winced. “I'm mostly fine.”

“Apartment, Rosemary.”

She glared at him, and then sighed. “Fine. I guess I ought to put on a new pair of pantyhose, at the very least.”

Perhaps she had wrenched or twisted something in the fall; her progress to the front door of the apartment complex and down the hall was slow and limping, and, given her caution with him, Alexander did not dare offer her his support. She opened her apartment door and went in, heading towards the couch in the living room.

She hadn't bothered closing the door behind her, so Alexander took it as an invitation. He shut the door but did not lock it before following her down the hall, coming to a halt at the edge of the living room, a respectable distance from her. After all, there no need to take actions that would only make Rosemary nervous… and from here, he had a better vantage point for checking the room for any obvious bugs or cameras.

“There’s no surveillance in here, if you're worried about that.”

Alexander raised a dubious eyebrow. “There is surveillance everywhere here.”

“Not in my apartment. One of the advantages of being management.”

“Hm.” Alexander didn't quite believe that Cutter would allow even Rosemary such latitude… but no. This was before the man’s paranoia had grown as bad as it had become in later years. This was when Albert Bennett had been in charge of security, and if Rosemary had wanted privacy in her apartment, she would have gotten it. “I may cook you something?”

Rosemary had kicked her heels off and had thrown herself back on the couch, propping one of her ankles up on a throw pillow. She stared suspiciously at him for a moment, and then shrugged. “Sure. Make sure to add some of whatever hallucinogens you're on. They'll probably help with the pain.”

Alexander laughed. “You would not have allowed me in your apartment if you truly thought such a thing.”

“Fair enough.” Rosemary looked resigned. “Look, the state of my fridge is pretty dire. You want to go raid the one in your apartment? It should be fully stocked for your arrival.” She pulled a ring with several keys on it out of her pocket and jangled it at him.

“This is test, yes?” Alexander crossed the small living room and stared down at her. “You wish to see if I go straight next door to the apartment which is mine, or go trying keys up and down the hall.”

Rosemary raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “Not a very good test, if you could pass it by using the most logical start to that search pattern.” She jangled the keys again. “I really am hungry. You going to make me lunch or not?”

He could have just held his hand out for the keys and let her drop them into his palm, but oh, his mind was still doubting the evidence of his eyes where she was involved. So instead he closed his hand around hers for a moment, felt her smooth palm against his, the keys trapped between them for the moment it took to take them from her. “I will return shortly.”

She was frowning at him again. “So you want to tell me how long we've been fucking in this future of yours?”

Alexander dropped the keys.


	2. Chapter 2

Alexander felt his face—no, his entire head—flush with embarrassment. “I, ah… no. We had—have—will never.” He had not even realized that was one of the things he had wanted from her, not until it had been too late.

That frown remained on her face. “Liar.”

“Rosemary, I have been impotent my entire adult life.” An awkward admission, but one he suspected she already knew the facts of.

“Volgograd.”

“Yes.”

“Darling, you do not need to be able to get an erection to have a satisfactory sexual life.”

“True. But it was simpler to redirect those energies to… alternate priorities.” And had been for so many years that by the time he had met her, he had no longer recognized what such urges meant.

“Huh.” She tilted her head to one side, studying him. “You mean that, don't you.”

“Yes.” Alexander stooped and scooped the keys off the ground. “I will return with ingredients. I must warn you, though, it has been… some years. Since I last cooked, that is.”

“It'll probably be better than anything I can throw together.”

“Hm. True enough. I have tasted your tuna casserole.”

Rosemary let out a bark of laughter at that. “Not doing a stellar job of convincing me we didn't sleep together, there.”

“What—?”

“Never you mind. Go get us lunch.”

He turned to leave, but paused before opening the door and turned back in Rosemary's direction. “I imagine you intend to call for backup while I am gone. Please make it someone who will not feel it necessary to report back to Cutter? I mean, to Carter,” he corrected himself, noting her perplexed look.

“I'll keep it to Al. He won't breathe a word of anything to Carter if I ask it of him.”

“You are certain?” Al had always had a soft spot for Alexander’s former lab manager, but that didn't mean the man wasn't more loyal to Mr. Cutter.

“Yes.”

Alexander nodded and left for the apartment next door.

When he returned to Rosemary’s apartment, carrying a plastic trash bag stuffed with half the contents of his fridge, Rosemary had relocated to the kitchen, the cord of the phone stretching from the wall to where she was perched on one of the two tall chairs that came with her kitchen table. She had propped her leg up on the other chair, and the tabletop was strewn with cotton swabs and bits of gravel she had obviously picked out of her knee with the bloody pair of tweezers that was next to them.

“Oh, here he is now,” Rosemary said, and then winced as she applied a piece of gauze that she had obviously soaked in hydrogen peroxide to the scrape. “Yes, Al, I know he’s probably a crazy person, but he knows me. And not the way you know someone you've just casually surveilled. So unless there’s some Russian operative running a deep game here, I'm inclined to think he is what he says he is.” She paused, and Alexander could just make out the deep baritone of Al’s voice responding as he moved to the counter and started unpacking the results of his raid on the fridge next door. “Yes, darling, I'll be fine. You should see this fellow. I could pick him up and throw him.” Another pause, and then Rosemary smiled. “I'll see you Sunday. And what do you mean by ‘if you haven't been murdered by then?’ I won't let him touch me, I promise.” Alexander had pulled out a cutting board and knife by then, and from the sideways glance she shot him, she seemed to be acknowledging how silly an assertion that was when he had what could easily be a deadly weapon in hand. “Yes. Love you too, Al.” And then she slid carefully out of her chair and hung the phone up.

“You are certain that phone is not tapped?” Alexander asked mildly as he searched her cabinets for a frying pan.

“Oh, it is. At my clearance level, though, it goes directly to either Al or Adriane, so nothing to worry about.”

“Not to Cut—to Carter?” Alexander opened another cabinet and peered into its depths.

“He relies on them for transcripts of the important bits, since he can read a conversation in a fraction of the time it takes to listen to it and his time is at a bit of a premium. What are you looking for?”

“Frying pan. For sausages.”

“Next cabinet over, top shelf.”

“Thank you.” He retrieved the pan and frowned. It was dusty. “Sausages, fried mushrooms and onions, salad?”

“Sounds gorgeous. How can I help?”

He stuck the frying pan in the sink and rinsed it out. “Finish cleaning your scrapes up. Call Adriane.”

“She’ll have questions.”

“She always does.”

Rosemary was busy at these tasks the entire time Alexander was at work preparing the meal. When he finally set a loaded plate in front of her, she let out a relieved sigh. “Sorry, _liebchen_, lunch is ready. I promise to head straight your way with this fellow in tow when it’s done, all right?”

This time Alexander was close enough to hear Adriane’s even voice protesting Rosemary’s affectionate nicknames. He took the phone from her and hung it on the hook, leaving her to dig in to lunch, only when he turned back towards her she had half-turned in her chair and was staring at him with a frown.

“What?”

“We really never had sex?”

“We worked together for years.” Too few years. Ones in which he had not appreciated her assistance enough.

“Yeah, well, the same can be said for every single one of the scientists I currently look after, and not one of them would have done that.”

“We were friends. Of a sort. As much as you can have friends here.”

“Were we?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.” She finally turned back to the food in front of her, and a moment later Alexander joined her.

“So, we will be going to see Adriane after lunch?”

“Yes. I think… well, you were right. She's got something. Or at least when I brought up proof of a th—of an alien contact event, she got all quiet for a moment and then said to come to the archives.”

“Theta scenario,” he said, and raised an eyebrow at her startled look. “I was senior staff aboard three missions. I know the codes.”

“I see.” She ignored him then, digging in to the food, and Alexander followed her example. The fried sausages and mushrooms and onions were glorious after what had been close to a decade in space, all told; there hadn't been much turnaround time between the first and second Hephaestus missions, not really long enough for him to even get used to the weight of the earth again, and proper cooked food had not been on his mind then.

“I will wash up,” he said when they were both done.

Rosemary shook her head. “Leave it. We should get to Adriane.”

“Very well.”

Rosemary hesitated once they were outside the apartment complex, and Alexander took it as another test of sorts, taking the lead and heading down the path that lead most directly to the archives. The number of buildings on campus had changed a great deal during the time he had been working there—in the late 1990s, Goddard consolidated all of their far-flung research sites onto a single campus—but the paths that connected everything had remained the same.

The first thing Adriane did when they reached the archives was sit him down and quiz him. There were some questions he hadn't been able to answer—some people he had never encountered, or had only known at a superficial level—but the answers he had been able to provide were apparently enough to convince her that he was from the future.

That, and the code words he had been able to produce.

“So. A theta scenario. Tell me, what signs were there that such a thing was truly occurring?”

Alexander started with the transmissions and went on from there. “And also… but I am not certain. There were anomalies, but she had been in space for a long time…”

“Go on.”

“Isabel Lovelace. She was human. But her medical data did not match what it had been… what it had been before. The first time I met her.”

“And her personality?”

Alexander paused and considered. She had not much resembled the same happy-go-lucky captain he had started his first mission on the Hephaestus with… but that change had come by the end of that mission. “Inconclusive. She was very angry,very paranoid. But she had good reason to be.”

“Hm.” Adriane sighed. “This is probably a bad idea. I want the two of you to promise that nothing of this will go beyond this room, yes?”

Alexander nodded, and heard Rosemary’s breathless “Yes,” from his side.

“I will play you some tapes. From the Tiamat.”

“I didn't think anything had come back from the Tiamat.” Rosemary’s voice was faint with shock once more. “Why didn't I know, Adriane?”

“It is not relevant to your job.”

“Like hell it’s not. I oversee the xenobiologists.”

“This is a matter of security, not xenobiology.”

“You mean Al knows? And didn't tell me?”

“Rosmarin, please.”

“No. I need to know this sort of thing. I—”

“Rosemary.” Alexander set his hand to her arm, a brief, stilling touch which shut her up immediately and left both women staring at him. “Let us listen first, and then you will know exactly what to complain about, yes?”

Rosemary looked as if she were about to protest, and then let out an exasperated little huff and turned back to Adriane. “Fine. Roll the tapes, then.”

They listened to the last words of Elizabeth Zhang in silence, and sat quietly for a long time after. It was Rosemary who finally broke the silence.

“Do you have the medical records for the duplicates?”

Adriane nodded.

Rosemary turned her attention to Alexander next. “Maybe you're one of them.”

“Them?”

Rosemary shot him an irritable look. “Are you being deliberately obtuse? One of the duplicates.”

“Ah. No. I do not see how it could be possible. I died. And then I awoke in the car on the way here. I do not see how they could have replaced me with a duplicate without Mr. Cutter noticing.”

“They can make duplicates of people appear aboard space stations. I doubt replacing you in a car would be that difficult for them, if they were really determined.” Rosemary frowned. “And it’s Carter.”

Alexander shook his head. “No. It is as if… as if I have been transplanted into the mind of my younger self, with all my memories intact.”

“Would you know if they weren't?”

A tricky question, given Pryce’s penchant for modifying minds. “Perhaps not.”

“We can always be sure. Do a medical exam,” Adriane interjected.

“Who could we even trust for that?” asked Rosemary.

“Stukov?”

“No,” Alexander said. “I would prefer… get us access to equipment and the medical records, and I can run tests myself.”

Both women turned dubious expressions on him.

“Or perhaps I could instruct Rosemary in how to carry them out,” he added awkwardly, recognizing suddenly what they had already realized, that any testing he carried out himself would naturally be suspect if he were a duplicate.

“I'd rather bring Stukov in for this.” Rosemary shifted uncomfortably. “I'm not…”

Alexander took her hand, and she looked up at him, startled. Too startled to resist when he squeezed it reassuringly. “Rosemary. I trust you. And I know you. I am certain you will be able to carry out whatever tests are necessary. And not because of blind faith, but because I have seen you work.”

Her eyes opened wide for a moment, and then that familiar, dangerous eyebrow of hers quirked up and she smiled up at him. “Really, really not doing a good job of convincing me we didn't have sex.”

“Are you two done?” Adriane’s voice had gone beyond dry and well into to arid. Alexander dropped Rosemary’s hand as if it were a hot coal and both of them turned back to Adriane.

“I guess this really leaves us with more questions than before,” said Rosemary. “If we do the tests, and he isn't a duplicate, does that mean this whole time travel thing is a fluke? Or is it something they know how to do, but didn't bother doing with the crew of the Tiamat? And if not, why not?” She paused for a breath before continuing in a contemplative tone of voice. “And of course we're left with the question we already had: if he was sent back on purpose, why?”

Alexander had been wondering the same thing.

He would be able to continue his research, of course; assuming he could reproduce at least some of the progress he would make in the next two decades from memory, he would be able to advance Decima a great deal in a very short time. Perhaps if what he had put in Officer Eiffel really had started working…

Officer Eiffel. Doug. Who had accused him of being so zoomed out that he no longer understood what it was to be human.

Those words had stung at the time, even if he hadn't admitted it to himself. Not enough for change, not then, but…

Rosemary’s hand came down on his arm, startling him out of his thoughts. Rosemary. Who had chosen Decima over a death from cancer, who had wanted to mean something so desperately that she had let him kill her in the name of progress.

He would not let it happen again.

He would not let it happen to any of them again.


	3. Chapter 3

Alexander was not an alien duplicate. He had not expected that he was, but to have some verification of it was a relief.

Captain Lovelace, on the other hand, probably had been, at least the second time around, if his memory of the medical exam he had done of her after she had been impaled by a piece of shrapnel was accurate. Strange to think that she had been so much who Isabel Lovelace was that he had not thought to truly question her return to the station.

He wondered why she had been sent back.

He wondered why he had, if it had been intentional.

All he could really do was decide on a path and carry it through. He refused to neglect his research—and Rosemary refused to let him, pointing out that if they truly wished to keep Mr. Carter out of the loop on the fact that Alexander did, in fact, seem to be from the future, he and she would have to pretend it was business as usual. But there was still space around the edges for what he hoped to do.

After a few weeks, however, he finally had to admit that a world that did not yet have a robust internet was a world in which it was very difficult to track people down. He pulled out the list he had prepared—names and approximate birth years, best guesses at their locations and rough physical descriptions—at one of his regular check-ins with Rosemary.

“You want to _what_?” she asked incredulously, looking over the list.

“I wish to make sure that none of these people die because of m—because of Goddard.”

Her eyes flicked sharply up at him, obviously catching that stammer, but she did not comment on it. “Fine. I’m not sure how you intend to make that happen, but we could certainly try. Just one problem.” She set the list flat on her desk and tapped it sharply. “All of these people are children.”

Alexander had not done the math yet, or he would have realized that himself. “I am not certain I remember all of their birth years correctly…”

“Even if you're off by a year or two, they'll still be pretty hard to hunt down.” She frowned at him. “Why does this matter to you?”

“Because…” he cast about for some logical reason, and could find none. “Because they all died. They all will die. If I do not do something.”

“So be patient and make sure things happen differently this time around. No need to disrupt them as children.”

Would he be strong enough by then, to choose differently? Or would this company grind him down again? Would this gradual thaw he had been experiencing stick, or would the search for progress turn him even colder than he had already become?

“It would be easier if they did not wind up in space in first place,” he said, not daring to voice his other thoughts. “And I suspect that in some of their cases, childhood will be the best time to intervene. Or does Mr. Carter not seek out those who have been damaged by their pasts?”

Rosemary looked as if she were about to protest, and then sighed and turned back to the list again. “I'll talk to Al and Adriane about it.”

“Thank you.”

Unsurprisingly, given their respective talents for information-gathering, it only took a few weeks for Adriane and Al to hunt down potential candidates for every single one of Alexander’s former/future crewmates and to present a list with their current locations and accurate dates of birth for all of them. It had done a lot to break through Al’s cynicism; the fact that all of the people Alexander had named existed was apparently enough to at least partially convince Al that Alexander’s story of time travel was true.

Looking at the list of birthdates and locations that he and Adriane had produced had probably done the rest.

“They really are all children,” Rosemary said despairingly. “My god. The oldest hasn't even turned 14 yet.”

“Well, we don't know that they're the right people yet. But I'm out in Oklahoma for an acquisition next week,” Al said. He was perched on the edge of Adriane’s desk like it was a stool and was pointedly ignoring the archivist’s glare. “I can look in to this Lambert fellow for you while I'm there.” His tone was casual, but something about it must have alerted Rosemary to something, because she looked up from the list to narrow her eyes suspiciously at Al.

“And what aren't you telling us?”

Al shrugged those massive shoulders of his in a way that suggested sudden awkwardness. “I, uh, knew a woman named Janie Lambert. Jeanine. For a little while while her husband was deployed. Lost track of her early on in 1975, but she was the one to cut it off, so I just assumed she didn't want me in her life any more and, y’know, gave her space. And her husband was due back for leave in a few weeks anyway.”

“I'm assuming you mean ‘knew’ in the biblical fashion?”

“Come on, Rosie, you know me. Of course it was.”

Alexander exchanged an exasperated look with Adriane, who had remained silent since handing over the lists. Al’s sexual exploits were many and well-known to everyone who worked at Goddard.

“And let me guess, young Sam has a mother named Jeanine.”

“He does,” Adriane interrupted. “Well. She, if we want to go by his birth certificate.” Information that Alexander had known from Lieutenant Lambert’s medical records, but which he had only given to the archivist when she had approached him for more details.

Al swore under his breath. “Hell. In Oklahoma?”

“We’ll get him somewhere safe.” Rosemary had placed her hand on Al’s arm, comforting him. “I'm not sure how we’ll manage it, but we’ll do it. Even if he’s not the Sam Lambert we’re looking for.”

“Still, if he’s…” mine, echoed the word that Al did not say but which they all heard anyway. “I should have checked in with Janie. Just to make sure things were okay. Hell, she wouldn't even have known when she broke it off. And she wouldn't have had any way to contact me by the time she did.”

“Well, better late than never.”

It didn't surprise anyone when, a week and a half later, Al showed up back in Florida with a tall, skinny red-headed woman in tow… and her even taller, skinnier teenaged son, looking equal parts awkward and proud in what was obviously a fresh crew cut and brand new clothing. Rosemary had loaded Alexander into her little red Bug and drove him to the motel a few towns over that Al had stashed them in for now, and Alexander had been able to see in a glance that this was his Sam Lambert, young and angry and stubborn as he had always been.

There was silence for the first part the car ride back to Goddard. Al had left his massive town car back with Janie and Sam and had doubled up in the back seat of Rosemary’s tiny red Bug, clearly uncomfortable but too lost in thought to notice it, Alexander suspected.

“That was him,” Alexander said when they were halfway back.

Al let out a sigh of relief. “Good. I just… I don't know why I did that. I know you wanted to keep him away from Goddard…”

“You did the right thing,” Rosemary said firmly, before Alexander could answer. When Alexander glanced sideways at her profile, her eyes were fixed on the road, but there was a certain leashed fury to her that left him certain she had also noticed the black eye that Janie had tried to hide behind too much makeup, the small round bruises of fingerprints that had shown on Sam’s arms when he’d pushed his sleeves up for a moment.

“Does his mother know yet? That he is… is not her daughter?” Alexander tried to fill the silence that had come over the car once again.

Al’s reflection in the rearview mirror shook his head. “I'm not sure Sam even knows yet. Though you should have seen his face light up when I told them that it would be easier to keep them safely away from Janie’s husband if he pretended to be a boy.”

“I'll have to introduce them both to Charlie,” Rosemary said, half-distracted by the drive. “Sterling too, if I'm not wrong?”

“You're not wrong,” Al said.

“Well, good. Let that boy meet some other folks like him, and he'll figure it out right quick. Maybe even before the wrong kind of puberty sets in properly.”

“Do you think it’s safe? To… y’know. Expand our little circle?” Al sounded anxious, an anxiety that, somewhat paradoxically, soothed Alexander’s worries about the man. If any of their little group were to report Alexander to Carter, his money would have been on Al. Al, whose first loyalty had always seemed to be to Goddard, to Mr. Carter.

But now Al had something of his own to protect.

“All they've got to know about the thing is that you caught up with an old girlfriend and noticed her son could use some assistance in that area.”

Alexander stared. Something about the way Rosemary had said girlfriend…

“What’s wrong, Rosie?” Al had obviously noticed as well.

“She’s just barely thirty-two.”

Al sat up, startled, and bumped his head on the roof of the car. “What? Ow!”

“While the two of you were having your little man talk or whatever with Sam, I was chatting with Janie.” There was a moment of tense silence in which neither Alexander nor Al dared to breathe. “In case the two of you haven't done the math, that means she was eighteen when Al was… was getting to know her.”

“I didn't know, Rosie. Honest.” Al’s voice was low and pleading. “I just knew she was having troubles with her husband and needed a friend.”

“And you being you, it lead where it did, I'm well aware.” Rosemary’s voice was harsh with sarcasm. “You could have asked her, Al.”

“I knew she was on the young side, and she seemed a little naive, but at the time I thought that was just because she’d gotten knocked up by her husband straight out of high school and he was an overprotective son of a bitch who secluded her, not because… aw, _fuck_.”

“Did the rest of the math, then?”

“I didn't know.”

“_You didn't ask_. And there’s no excuse for that, Al. You know there isn't.”

“What is rest of math?” Alexander interjected, hoping to cool Rosemary’s anger before it affected her driving.

“She’d been married for almost four years when she met Al. To a man about your age. And had lost at least two pregnancies.”

Alexander found himself resorting to swear words at that. “Men like her husband should be castrated.”

“It takes parental permission to marry someone off that young in Oklahoma. Her father’s permission. So how about we consider at least two castrations, hm?” Rosemary’s voice was full of a friendly sort of warning, no doubt directed at Al. A glance into the rear view mirror showed a rueful look on Al’s face, a subtle acceptance that he would deserve it if she decided to raise that number to three.

The remainder of the drive back to Goddard was done in silence. Al was the first out of the car, with an apologetic “I'm overdue for a final report to Carter on the situation in Oklahoma,” but Rosemary sat there, clenching the wheel with one hand and the clutch with the other, frozen with anger.

“What do you suppose has happened to Janie’s husband?” Alexander asked in a light tone, as much to draw Rosemary out of her rage as to get a second opinion. After all, he did not for one minute think that Al would not have let the man be. Not after seeing those bruises.

“Most likely something much worse than castration,” Rosemary said in a distant tone, and then she shook herself and relaxed. “Assuming he hasn't had a dishonorable discharge in the years since, I imagine Janie will be getting a pension in a week or two. But we’ll be sure to supplement it.” She turned a sharp look on Alexander, and then nodded. “Thank you.”

“I could tell you needed something to break you out.” That got another sharp look from Rosemary, but she had long since stopped teasing him with the assumption that they had slept together every time one of these strange, intimate moments happened.

He had not yet dared to tell her about the conditions under which such intimacy had grown.

Rosemary undid her seatbelt and stretched, but did not open her door just yet. “We should get back to work,” she said glumly. “God. Why'd I decide to do this in the middle of the work day?”

“Because that was when Al called.” Alexander smiled at her. “And it means we have not yet had lunch, and you know how cranky both of us get when we have not yet had lunch. So first we will go into your apartment and have something to eat. Doctor’s orders.”

Rosemary laughed at that. “Fine. But nothing too complicated, hm?”

“I make no promises.”

“Terrible man.”


	4. Chapter 4

It took less than a month for Mr. Carter to notice Sam.

It was Al’s fault; his job might have relied on his ability to be stealthy in a corporate environment, but he wasn’t used to having a personal life to keep secret… and he hadn’t quite been able to keep away from Janie and Sam. Not because he was trying to rebuild any sort of relationship outside of being friends with Janie; that past was too strange and complicated for anything good to come of delving deeper. But Sam...

“It’s so weird looking at the two of them together,” Rosemary said, plopping down at Alexander’s side on the picnic blanket he had claimed. It was the annual Goddard Fourth of July picnic, complete with grills manned by a rotating staff of caterers and far too many things called salad that were just carrying mechanisms for mayonnaise.

Across the green, Al was playing frisbee with Sam and a few of the younger security staff members, with Janie looking on from a bench in the shade. Sam was all gangly teenaged limbs and awkward movements, but even still, it was easy to see Al in the way he moved, the loose, loping way he ran, the way he laughed.

“Al did not strike me as the sort to be a family man, it is true.”

“He had seven older siblings.”

Their conversation meandered from there, away from subjects it was better to keep to their private meetings in her office or his, on to a particular tangle he was experiencing with a micro project she had assigned to him. Eventually, he pulled a tiny notebook out of his pocket and started taking notes; conversations with Rosemary were always particularly productive that way.

Rosemary trailed off in the middle of a sentence, her gaze fixed on something a short distance away, and Alexander followed her line of sight and froze. Mr. Carter had his arm around Sam’s shoulders and was chatting with him about something that had Sam practically vibrating with excitement. “Must be aliens,” Rosemary murmured. “Sam read an article about the Fermi paradox in some children’s science magazine that Al subscribed him to, and he’s been going on about it to anyone who will listen for the past month.”

“One of Mr. Carter’s special interests, I am afraid.”

Rosemary sighed and put her hand over his, and Alexander turned his attention back to her. “Nothing we can do about it now, I suppose. At least they’re both enjoying themselves.”

“Mm.”

She glanced around surreptitiously, and continued in a mild tone when it became apparent that no one was paying attention to them. “Speaking of your young proteges… we’ve got an actual location for your Officer Eiffel.”

“You have found Doug?”

Rosemary nodded. “He’s in a group home. In Massachusetts.”

“Group home?”

“For children in the foster care system.” She sighed again. “He’s in one for children with behavioral issues.”

“I see.”

“I was thinking we could find some nice family to adopt him. Get him into a stable environment.”

Alexander stared fixedly at the grass peeking up over the edge of the picnic blanket. “I am not certain what good it would do. Look at how trying to get Sam into a better situation went. Now he is here, talking aliens with Mr. Carter. He will have more of the man’s attention, not less.”

Rosemary ran her fingertips over the back of Alexander’s hand in an absentminded fashion, staring vaguely off in the direction of Carter and Sam. “We could… I mean, I have…” She let out a little breathless laugh and glanced back at Alexander. “God, why is this so hard to say? I have a son. One I gave birth to, even if I haven’t been much of a mother to him outside of monetary support. And Mr. Carter knows that if he wants me to keep his biochem research division ticking along like a well-oiled clock, he can’t lay hands on my son or his family. Maybe if we sent Doug there…”

Alexander turned his hand over and caught hers, interlacing their fingers for a brief moment and squeezing gently. She moved her hand to her lap once he released her and gave him a peculiar look.

“What was that for?”

“Your granddaughter was one of the retrieval crew at the end of my first mission aboard the Hephaestus.”

“I see.” Rosemary sat silent for a long moment. “Three months training for a space mission, minimum. Longer than that, if she had clearance for cleanup on the sort of disaster you tell me that mission was.” Rosemary’s hands clenched around one another in her lap. “Which means I don’t even make it to 2010.”

“As if you would still be working at the age of 75,” Alexander said in a deliberately light voice, trying to derail this train of thought before Rosemary could ride it to its final destination.

“Wouldn’t I be?”

She had a point, but Alexander was saved from a more difficult conversation by Sam bouncing up from out of nowhere to fling himself on the blanket between Rosemary and Alexander, a giant grin on his face. “Aunt Rosie, Mr. Carter says Al can take me on a tour of one of Goddard’s radio telescopes!” His face flicked to a frown, and then back to a smile. “Radio telescope facilities, that is. He said it would probably be pretty boring, but…”

Alexander tuned out Sam’s excited babbling, feeling heartsick. Oh, yes, this Sam Lambert would grow into a man so much happier than the one Alexander had known during that disastrous first mission aboard the Hephaestus, but at what cost? What hooks could Mr. Carter slip into Sam’s psyche, to make the boy loyal to him alone? What damage could Carter do from such close range that would not be found until years later?

Sam tugged Rosemary to her feet, off to talk to Janie, and Alexander was left alone on the picnic blanket, feeling very old and alone and tired. Eventually, he laid back on the ground and dozed, knowing that, at his age, he would regret sleeping on the ground when he woke, but not having enough energy to do something about it. When he woke again, it was to the gentle touch of Rosemary’s hand to his shoulder, to a sky dark overhead, to air thick with humidity and with the smell of of the citronella candles.

“Fireworks are about to start,” she murmured, helping him pull himself back to a seated position. He murmured a groggy thanks back to her and did his best to resist the urge to lean against her side, longing for the comfort of physical contact in his half-asleep state.

The first firework lit up the sky… and hit like a physical blow to his chest. Alexander doubled over, hardly able to breathe through the panic that surged through him as concussive boom after concussive boom filled the air.

He barely registered Rosemary coaxing him to his feet, Rosemary, tugging him along Goddard’s secluded paths back towards the apartment complex. Even when they were far enough away that the sound of each explosion no longer hit with such force, Rosemary still had to pull him along, his numb limbs no longer responding to the impulses of his own brain without outside stimuli.

He had expected her to take him to his apartment and leave him there. Instead she took him to hers, herded him into the bathroom, sat him down on the closed toilet seat lid, and turned on the faucets in both the sink and bathtub. The white noise of running water drowned out what could still be heard of the fireworks at this distance, and slowly, the panic receded.

“Better?” Rosemary sat herself down on the rim of the bathtub, as close to his side as she could get, her knees brushing his.

Alexander nodded, not trusting his voice, and Rosemary smiled hesitantly at him and checked her watch.

“We've probably got another fifteen minutes until the grand finale, but hooligans will be setting off fireworks everywhere around here for the next couple of days. You've probably heard some of it already.”

Alexander swallowed hard. “It does not seem to be as much of a problem from… from a distance.”

“I see.” Rosemary studied him with a frown. And then… oh, then she held him, first reaching over to rub his back gently, and then, when he did not protest, when his tense muscles relaxed with a shiver under her touch, she slid off the rim of the bathtub to kneel on the floor at his feet and pull him into her arms.

He collapsed against her and cried.

“You died in some kind of explosion, didn’t you,” Rosemary whispered against the side of his head. He could only nod and whimper and cling to her.

“Stay here tonight. I'll keep you safe.”

“Rosemary…” His own voice was barely there, his throat raw from convulsive sobs.

“Yeah, I know, we didn't sleep together. Would it help? If I held you while you slept?”

To his own shame, he nodded once more.

For the first time since he had been sent back, he did not dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Followed by [Chapter 1 of The Way They Loved](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247292/chapters/50590154), AKA some snippets from Rosemary's perspective.


	5. Chapter 5

“Mr. Carter wants to see you in his office.”

Alexander jerked guiltily at the sound of his lab tech’s voice. That was never a good sequence of words. “Thank you, Aditi. Did he provide any time parameters?”

“Right now, if possible.” Aditi looked down at the slides Alexander had been halfway through taking notes on. “I'll prepare new samples for later this afternoon. These will be useless by then, even if we refrigerate them.”

“Thank you.” Alexander made a final note on the slide he had been working on and whipped it out of the microscope, handing it off to Aditi.

His working relationship with his lab techs was much improved this time around. Well, with Aditi, at least; Andrew was never going to be anything but terrified of everything and everyone. But after all the years spent aboard space stations, years spent preparing his own samples and washing his own glassware… well, he really appreciated their assistance much more than he had in the past.

Especially as progress on Decima was, paradoxically, even slower this time around. By the time Rosemary had settled him down for his initial research consultation, he had mapped out a rough plan to get from where Decima was now—where he had remembered Decima being now—to the strain that had started working on Officer Eiffel.

Problem was, his memory wasn't quite as good as he had expected it to be, and no surprise when Rosemary pointed it out. There had been far, far more versions of Decima than there had been years he had worked on it at Goddard, and even knowing roughly the final form he wanted it to take meant nothing in a past where his tools for making direct edits to the retrovirus’s genome were so much more limited… and would have been useless anyway, because he had forgotten so much about the incremental changes that had gotten him to the point he had been at two decades from now.

It was shocking, then, to be shoved into Mr. Carter’s office by the man’s secretary and to find that Alexander’s research on Decima had nothing at all to do with why he had been called in.

“Would you mind telling me,” Mr. Carter said in his iciest tone of voice, “what sort of little intrigue you've drawn my best lab manager into that has her neglecting her duties the way she is?”

“Er.” The question was so far from the pointed interrogation about his progress on Decima that he had been anticipating that Alexander didn't know how to respond.

“Well?”

“I am not certain what you are referring to.”

Mr. Carter let out a low, dangerous chuckle. “Oh, you sound just like her. ‘Why, I have no clue what you mean, sir! I've just been having regular research meetings with the man.’” Carter’s impression of Rosemary was distressingly accurate. Even more distressing was the stapled printout he flung down on his desk in front of Alexander. “Thirty-two meetings over an hour long in your office since you've arrived for which Rosemary has, for some reason, felt the need to disable surveillance. Several longer than an hour and a half, which is just excessive.”

“She has been helping me acclimate to my job here.” Alexander tried to keep his voice calm, but inside he was panicking. The printout contained records of every single meeting he had had with Rosemary since arriving here, or at least the ones that had taken place in the lab complex, and their frequency was damning. And, of course, Mr. Carter was far better at ferreting out secrets than Alexander had ever been at hiding them from the man.

“There is no reason to turn off surveillance in your office for such meetings.”

“I have nothing to do with that.” Alexander was struggling to keep his voice calm and even.

“I think you do. I think you know exactly why I am worried. And I am going to keep you here until you tell me what it is.” There was a low menace to Carter’s voice that indicated that he was ready and willing to throw a whole afternoon away on this, for all that he was a very busy man.

Fortunately, before Alexander had time to think of a way to answer Mr. Carter that wouldn't raise the man’s suspicions more, the office door burst open, and there was Rosemary, ducking her way under the arm of Mr. Carter’s secretary. “Oh, _there_ you are!” she exclaimed, smiling at Alexander and ignoring both Carter and his secretary entirely. “Bill here was just trying to convince me that I’d misheard Aditi when she said you'd been called in to see Mr. Carter.” At this—and probably at some unseen and unspoken cue from Mr. Carter—the secretary gave up on his attempt to extract Rosemary from the office and returned to his post at the desk outside of it, shutting the door behind him.

Rosemary turned her attention to Carter. “What’s this about, sir? You usually go through me for schedules when pulling my scientists out of their labs. Half of this morning’s observation slides are going to be completely useless now.”

A small vein twitched in Mr. Carter’s forehead, and he gestured down at the paper in front of Alexander. “You know exactly what this is about, Rosemary.”

Rosemary glanced down at the paper and sighed. “I might as well tell him everything,” she said next, the words obviously directed at Alexander.

“Rosemary—”

“Darling, he’s going to find out eventually. Better to come clean now. Trust me.”

At those two words, Alexander suddenly relaxed. _Trust me._ Rosemary knew how to fix this, and she would.

“Dr. Kelley and I are fucking.” The crude phrasing jolted Alexander, making him blush, but Mr. Carter’s only reaction was a slightly raised eyebrow.

“I thought you didn't fish the seas you supervised,” Carter said in a mild tone.

“Oh, You know how these things start. Late nights in the lab, frustrations are high… and then you find yourself wondering, ‘what if I could work off some of this frustration in a different way?’ And then two weeks later you find yourself pulling them into their office for quickies during the work day.” Rosemary smirked at Carter. “It shouldn't be surprising at all. After all, sir, isn't that how you and Dr. Pryce got your start?”

Mr. Carter’s face flushed at that, much to Alexander’s surprise. “Still, you're usually more… subtle than that.”

“I am wondering now what you thought was going on all those times I turned surveillance off for meetings in his office.”

“I didn't know what to think,” Mr. Carter said stiffly, his annoyance at being outmaneuvered obvious on his face. “And really, an hour and a half is not a quickie.”

“Maybe not if you lack imagination,” came Rosemary’s sotto voce response.

“Enough. We’re done here. Just keep your sexual shenanigans out of the office from now on, hm?”

“I make no promises. Now come along, darling. I was looking for you.”

Alexander got to his feet and followed Rosemary out of Carter’s office, a little smile making its way to his face and staying there.

“You were glorious,” he said as soon as they were out on the paths of Goddard’s campus once more.

“I was terrified,” she said, smiling shakily up at him. “Not in there, you know, but when I went to your lab to look for you and Aditi said you'd been called over to see Carter. I was terrified,” she repeated.

Alexander clucked his tongue in concern and pulled her down a side path, and then another, Rosemary following without protest, until they found themselves at one of the little scenic vistas that dotted Goddard’s campus. Alexander did a final check to make sure that no one else was nearby, and then he pulled Rosemary into a hug, tucking her head against his shoulder and letting his hand linger on the back of her neck, gently stroking her tension away. She sighed and relaxed against him, wrapping her arms loosely around his waist.

“Honestly, this feels naughtier than fucking in your office would be. Not that we’re doing that,” she said, her voice muffled by his shirt collar.

“Mm.” Alexander continued stroking the back of her neck gently. “Why were you looking for me?”

“I had an idea. A truly awful idea that I want you to tell me is terrible because right now I'm so excited about it that I can't see the flaws.”

“Very well.”

Rosemary lifted her head from his shoulder and took a step back, and Alexander released her reluctantly. “I was thinking… you know how NASA has space camp? As an outreach program, that is.”

Alexander was vaguely aware of such a thing. He nodded.

“Well, why shouldn't Goddard have our own version of it? Two or three weeks every summer. Bring a bunch of kids in, teach them things about space and science, so on.”

Alexander frowned. “I do not understand…”

“We send special invitations and scholarships to your kids. Get them here, get you a chance to interact with them without raising suspicions.”

Alexander let out a little hiss of dismay. “But goal is to keep them away from Goddard!”

Rosemary gave him a slightly pitying look. “I think that ship has sailed. For Sam, at the very least, but also… well, how did you think you were going to find ways to influence their lives without bringing them to the attention of Goddard?” She took him gently by the elbows—he had folded his arms across his chest, an unconscious, protective gesture—and just looked up at him, something about her exuding confidence. “If we can’t keep them from ending up here, isn't it better to make sure they're prepared when it finally happens?”

Alexander released his tension in a long, drawn-out sigh. “Perhaps you are right.”

“You know I am.”

Rosemary was smiling up at him, exultant, almost glowing from within… and Alexander could not quite resist.

When he leaned down to plant a careful kiss on her mouth, neither did she.

It was a very long, quiet moment before they broke apart. Rosemary’s smile had turned into a frown. “We never even did that, did we?”

“Once,” Alexander heard himself say. Once, when he had just discovered that she was dying. Once, and then she had flung the accusation at him that he was only using it to convince her that he cared enough to try and save her, that all he really wanted was a Decima subject who knew as much about the virus as he did.

It would have been useless, then, to protest that he really did care for her. Useless, then, to kiss her again, because each time he considered it, her accusation had echoed in his head, and there had been just enough truth to what she had said that he did not know if that had been the only truth all along.

But that had been then. His past, and the future once more.

And this was now.

“May I kiss you again?” he asked, and when she nodded, he drew her back into his arms and made the most of now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Followed by [Chapter 2 of The Way They Loved.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247292/chapters/51733972#workskin)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was going to have actual plot, but instead it’s just Rosemary and Hilbert having More Conversations.
> 
> Follows Chapter 2 of [The Way They Loved](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247292/chapters/51733972#workskin)

Al took over planning, once Rosemary pitched the idea to him. It was clear he was shaken by Mr. Carter’s sudden interest in Sam—interest that hadn't waned since the company picnic—and Alexander thought that perhaps Al was looking for a way to distract Carter from focusing too much on one young person with an interest in science by introducing him to a whole host of them. And part of Al’s job was public relations, after all. The suggestion of a summer camp as a public relations stunt would come easier from him than it would from anyone else, or at least Carter would be more willing to buy it.

And now they had eight months to make it work.

“Eleven to sixteen,” Rosemary told him, once planning was under way. Alexander frowned, and she held up her hands defensively. “I know. But the liability insurance is enough of a nightmare already, and Carter’s only giving us two years to start. If we can get proof of concept, we can expand the age range.”

“Mm. It is not what I hoped, but…”

“I don't know if we'll be able to get Mace. Not internationally, or at least not until he’s a little older. But from what you've said about Renée, I think she'll get along well with Sam, and that’s a start.”

Alexander let out an impatient huff, and rubbed his hand across his face, pushing his glasses to his forehead. “How did this become so difficult?” he muttered.

That got a laugh from Rosemary. “It's easy to forget that even the people you meet as adults were children once.” She paused, and tapped a finger on her desk. “I'm… I'm inviting my granddaughters.”

Alexander started, dropping his glasses back to the bridge of his nose so that he could stare at her. He hadn't even known of their existence before Rosemary’s death the first time around, and it had been clear from her records that they were estranged. “I thought…”

“I know. But if they're going to end up here anyway…”

“Rosamaria will. I do not know about the younger one.”

Rosemary winced. “Abigaíl. And why that damn boy named them both after me, when I wasn't there for him…”

“Mm.”

“Anyway, I was going to ask. Is there anyone else I should have Adriane and Al hunting down for you?”

Alexander froze, considering. “…no.”

That got a sharp look from Rosemary. “You don't sound very certain.”

“There are—there will be—others. But they were definitely in Carter’s power, you understand? Special ops.”

“Colonel Kepler.” Alexander had mentioned the man a time or two when discussing his past-slash-future, and Rosemary had always been good with names.

“He would be perhaps twelve years old, now. But putting him in Carter’s orbit even sooner… I cannot see how that would do anything but make things worse.”

Rosemary was frowning now, little lines of tension gathered between her eyebrows, at the corners of her eyes. Alexander wanted suddenly to go around her desk, to press kisses to those places until her frown disappeared. But she had not invited him close enough to do such a thing since the day she had rescued him from Carter and had first proposed this ridiculous camp idea, and he had not dared to push against her boundaries for fear that she would shut him out entirely.

“Did Al train him last time?” she finally asked, breaking the tense silence that had grown between them.

Alexander shook his head. “I do not know when Kepler joined Goddard, but given Kepler’s current age I think it unlikely.”

“So which of us goes first, then? Should I start a betting pool?” Rosemary’s voice was sharp, and, he thought, a little bit hurt.

“Rosemary…”

“Look, I've faced my own mortality before. It’s the not knowing that’s driving me crazy.” She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her fingertips to the inner corners of them, as if forcing off tears.

“I simply do not know what good it would do. We may have changed enough that it will not come the same way, you understand? For you or for him.”

“Tell me.”

“Rosemary…”

“Goddamnit, Dmitri, I need to know.”

The name he had been born with hit him like a slap to the face. He flinched away from her. “I killed you,” he said hoarsely.

Rosemary let out a snort of laughter at that. “As if. You kill Al too, then?”

Alexander shook his head. “Stroke. In 1995. A second within six months. I am not certain of timing. I was in space.”

Rosemary looked contemplative at that. “That damn man always does work too hard.” She narrowed her eyes at Alexander. “But you kill me? That I won't buy.”

“You volunteer. Decima.” Incoherent was the best that he could do. He hoped it was enough for her to understand.

“I can't imagine why I'd do that if it was still killing people. Perhaps if you got it to work…” she trailed off, another frown etching deep creases in her face. “I was dying anyway, wasn't I.”

Alexander couldn't answer. Her eyes were locked on his face, studying him, and eventually she gave a little nod.

“You can't blame yourself for that, darling. Not if something else was killing me first.”

He let out a low sob at that. “I thought it would work. I thought—” Another sob wrenched its way out of his chest, and suddenly Rosemary was at his side, pulling him against her chest and hugging him close. “I killed you. Because I thought I could save you. Because I thought I could—”

“All the willpower in the world can't make something work that isn't ready for it,” Rosemary said in a low, comforting voice. “There must have been some reason I thought your virus was a better option than whatever else lay before me.”

“I killed you,” he said again. “Never again, you understand?” His voice was muffled against her jacket, and she stepped back, frowning down at him. “When Decima is ready once more, it goes in me. No one else. I will not… I cannot…” He let out a low hiss of breath, searching for words.

“Carter will start to wonder if you don't start human trials within the next year or two.”

“I do not care. I will not allow others to bear this burden for me. Not this time. It was…” Alexander shuddered. “It was too easy,” he continued quietly. “After you. It was too easy to forget that they were human too.”

A low sigh from Rosemary, and then, “Yes. It is. Even the folks who don't act like it and make you wonder if they deserve to be considered as such.” She let out an exhausted little laugh at that. “So what do I look out for, that’ll be killing me so nastily I decide your virus is better?”

“Cancer,” Alexander forced past a clenched jaw.

“Let me guess,” she said, that exhausted amusement still an undercurrent in her voice. “Some ass of a doctor spends far too much time telling me to lose some weight and far too little time actually figuring out what’s wrong with me, hm?”

“Something like that.” Alexander felt the tension in his body release, and he slumped back in his chair.

“Well, we’ll just make sure to catch it in time, this time around. And tie Al to his bed, if he has a stroke and tries to go right back to working too soon after.” She leaned into his side, wrapping an arm around his shoulders again and resting her chin on the top of his head. “That’s me and Al sorted… what happens to Adriane?”

“Adriane will still be alive for heat death of universe,” came Alexander’s somewhat dire response. The archivist would hardly look a day older in twenty years time, and had only grown more terrifying with age.

Rosemary snorted with laughter. “I would not put it beyond her.” She pulled away from Alexander once more, dusting off the front of her suit jacket in a self-conscious way as she made her way back around her desk. “I think we should add Kepler to the mix,” she said once she was seated again, the width of the desk between them. “We’ll just have to play keep-away with Carter, hm?”

“Very well. I will get what details I know to Adriane.”

“Excellent.”

Their conversation meandered back to business as usual at that, Rosemary pulling out a half-dozen reasonable side projects for Alexander to work on while Decima made its slow and steady progress towards something that might work. “I can stall Cutter for a while,” she said, picking up one of the project proposals and frowning down at it. “These will help. And we might be able to fake Decima trials, at least for a bit, though I’d rather not resort to that if we don't have to.”

Alexander nodded. He had barely paid attention as she had taken him through the projects, trusting them all to be solid starts for whatever their contents were. Instead his mind kept slipping to his confession, and to the brisk way she had withdrawn after comforting him. No hope, there.

He supposed there never had been.

“And that’s that, I suppose. Scamper on back to your lab.”

Alexander nodded again and got to his feet, taking the proffered packet of papers. “Thank you. For…”

Rosemary looked uncomfortable. “No need to thank me, darling. Just doing what’s necessary to keep you in working order.”

Ah, he truly had lost any chance he had had with her. “Very well. We will schedule another check-in… when?”

A side-long, awkward glance down at the calendar on her desk, and then she was saying words that filled him with a fierce sort of hope once more. “I was hoping we could have a chat. About what to do with the younger ones. Come by my apartment this evening?”

Alexander could only nod.

And that night, there were no words between them at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only-implied-here smut can be found in [Chapter 3 of The Way They Loved](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247292/chapters/51736000), if that's your kind of thing.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hilbert makes a couple of proposals to Rosemary, ostensibly in the service of establishing a stable household for Eiffel. (No, I did not expect these two to take over. Back to the kids in the next chapter.)

“Doug is back in group home.” Alexander had been by the archives that day to get some filed notes from Adriane, and she had shared the latest report on his former future crew members with him. By now they had affirmative IDs for everyone and regular access to school reports, along with whatever surveillance Al could manage while he was on one of his little business trips.

“Mm.” Rosemary frowned down at the paper she was reading through, her pen pausing in the middle of whatever note she had been scribbling. “We’ll have to figure out some intervention there.”

“I was wondering if I…?”

Rosemary shot him a swift, sideways look. “You would want to?”

“I…” He frowned. “I do not know. But if it were a choice between trying to figure out how to be parent, and abandoning him to sort of childhood I had? I would be willing to try.”

Rosemary turned back to the paper with a little frown puckering her brow. “I’m not sure they’d be in any hurry to approve an unmarried foreign man as a foster parent, even if Doug is a difficult case. _Especially_ because he is.”

“Mm.” Alexander lapsed into silence, waiting for Rosemary’s mind to work away at the problem, and a few minutes later he was rewarded.

“Though I suppose Adriane might be able to forge some paperwork that would establish you as a distant relative, and a distant relative offering to take on the care of an orphaned cousin they just found out about…” she muttered in a distracted tone of voice, the better part of her attention still clearly still on the paper.

“It would be easier if I were married, no?”

“I suppose.” Rosemary did not look up, still reading, and Alexander found himself smiling even as he let out a sigh of exasperation.

“Rosemary.”

“What?” She glanced up at him, looking at him wide-eyed over her reading glasses.

“I am asking you to marry me.”

Her eyebrows flew up her forehead in surprise. “Whatever for?”

“As you say, me being married would certainly make the foster system more likely to approve a bid to foster Doug, but also...” he reached out and carefully removed the paper from Rosemary’s hand, setting it in her lap and claiming that hand for his own. “Do you still need to ask why I would wish to marry you?”

Rosemary blushed and looked away. “I’m not sure being married to me would be _that_ advantageous to your case. I’m old enough to be the boy’s grandmother.”

“And I am not old enough to be grandfather?”

“Only if everyone got knocked up in their teens.” Rosemary sighed and squeezed his hand gently. “And with the hours I work... you’d basically be a single parent anyway.”

“Perhaps it is time for you to change career paths to something that will not leave you at the beck and call of others.” Alexander lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a light kiss to the back of it. “How long has Dr. Weiss been trying to retire?”

“Five years,” Rosemary said distantly. “But we haven’t found someone with the right breadth of knowledge to take over xeno—wait.” She turned her attention back to him, intent and puzzled. “You’re not suggesting I—I haven’t done research of my own in almost forty years!”

“Have you not?” Alexander turned her hand over and pressed a kiss to her palm. “I seem to recall you being very hands on when you have a chance to be.”

Rosemary shifted uncomfortably, turning away to stare at the far corner of her living room ceiling. “Well, that’s just assisting, you know. But I couldn’t...”

“Do you intend to let what that man did to you determine the entire path of your life?”

Rosemary’s gaze flicked back to him, her eyes very wide and a little wild. “How…?”

“After you died last time. Adriane… left. When I came to archives to add final report to your file.” It had been a kindness he hadn’t expected from the terrifying archivist, and one he had needed at the time.

“This damn company and its records.” Her voice was hoarse. “Carter would never let me. I’m too valuable where I am.”

“He will have to replace you eventually.”

“Dr. Pryce _depends_ on me.”

“Dr. Pryce can depend on someone else for a change.” Alexander pressed another kiss to her palm. “Or she can work with you as peer for once instead of as minion to order about.”

“She doesn’t…”

“Doesn’t she?”

Rosemary bit her lower lip, and released it in a strained laugh. “You’re going to keep pushing this, aren’t you.”

“Not if you tell me you do not truly want it.”

Rosemary freed her hand from his and picked the paper up from her lap, shifting uncomfortably away from him. “I’ll think about it.”

“About getting lab of your own, or about marrying me?”

“Both.”

“All that I ask.”

Alexander edged carefully around Rosemary for the next couple of weeks, though she did not stop letting him into her apartment in the evenings when he knocked, especially when he brought offerings of home-cooked food. She even sought him out in his apartment one of the nights when he hadn’t gone to her, just to sink against him when he opened his arms for her, her eyes shut and exhaustion apparent in every line of her face and body. And though they did not talk, and she drew away from him in short order to return to her own apartment, that small action left him with hope.

“Lab meeting tomorrow at ten,” she told him, stopping by his lab one day halfway through the third week since he had brought up the idea of marrying her. “All hands.”

Alexander raised his eyebrows at her. She only ever met with her entire lab group at once when there were major changes to the staff coming down the line.

“Don’t ask for details,” she said, raising her hand in a way that stilled the question he wanted to ask on his lips. “I’ll have a hard enough time with it tomorrow.”

“I will not,” Alexander said, smiling.

“And don’t smile like that!” But she was smiling too.

“I will not,” he said again, his smile turning into a grin so wide it made his cheeks ache.

“Incorrigible man,” she said in a low, breathless voice, and she stepped in close to him and pulled him down into a swift kiss, the first time she had ever done such a thing in the lab building. “Yes to the other thing, too,” she added quietly as she pulled away from him.

Alexander could only stand there smiling, watching her as she whirled her way out of his office, no doubt on her way to announce the meeting to the other researchers on the floor.

The next day at the meeting, Dr. Weiss was the only other person who didn’t look confused about why they were there.

“I wasn’t aware that anyone was going to space soon?” Dr. Gao asked, the first to break the silence, the inquisitive tone of her voice mildly accusatory. She didn’t like being out of the loop.

“We’re waiting on Janet,” Rosemary said.

“Why is Janet—” Dr. Solomon’s question was interrupted by the other lab manager entering the meeting room.

“Sorry, Rosemary. Got caught up with Dr. Dominguez.”

Rosemary dismissed this excuse with a wave of her hand. “As you all know, Dr. Weiss has been putting off retirement for the past few years while we tried to find a replacement with the necessary breadth of experience to take point on our xenobiology research.”

“And you’ve found someone?” Dr. Gao asked irritably. She disliked strangers even more than she disliked being out of the loop.

“Yes.” Rosemary looked down at the notepad in front of her, obviously uncomfortable in a way Rosemary rarely was when she was on the job. “Me.”

The room went utterly silent at that, only the difficult sound of Dr. Weiss's breathing audible.

“You…?” Dr. Solomon raised her eyebrows incredulously.

“Yasmin, honestly,” Dr. Falk interjected.

“She’s only got a bachelor’s degree,” Dr. Solomon spat.

“I did not take you for an elitist,” Dr. Weiss said, the words creaking out harshly. There was another silence, all of them no doubt reflecting on Dr. Weiss’s age and slow decline, a decline that had accelerated over the past six months… and perhaps, just a little, on how much of his work would fall on them if he died without a replacement in place.

Dr. Gao’s sudden nod caught Alexander’s eye. “It is about time.”

Rosemary looked startled at that. “Edwina!”

“You are wasted as a lab manager,” Dr. Gao said. “And it’s good to see that you’ve finally recognized it.”

“You never said,” Rosemary looked surprised… and surprisingly gratified.

“Would you have listened?” Dr. Gao glared at Dr. Solomon. “And you should know as well as I do that her work is as good as any doctoral candidate. In all of our disciplines.” She turned her glare on the rest of the table, as if daring them to challenge her; she had been a college professor before she had come to Goddard Futuristics, looking for the sort of research funding she hadn’t been able to find at a public university.

Dr. Weiss was smiling now. “Told you,” he said to Rosemary.

Dr. Solomon still looked unconvinced, but Dr. Falk put her hand on the other woman’s arm, a significant look indicating that they would no doubt be discussing it in private later, most likely until Dr. Solomon came around to her partner’s point of view.

“I take it Janet’s here because she’ll be taking over your job from here on out,” Dr. Falk said, her attention still on Dr. Solomon’s face.

“All of us, at least,” Rosemary said. “I’ll still be assisting Dr. Pryce in my spare time.”

They were all already familiar with Janet, already used to going to her for lab requisitions when Rosemary was unavailable for one reason or another, so after a brief report from each of them on their current projects and a promise from Janet to schedule more detailed individual check-ins once she had fully picked up the reins of Rosemary’s job, the meeting was over. Alexander caught Rosemary’s eye and the two of them waited for everyone else to leave, Dr. Weiss shuffling out last of all, leaning heavily on his cane and pausing to shoot the pair of them an amused look before he shut the door to the conference room behind him.

“Now about that other matter…” Alexander said, getting to his feet and crossing to Rosemary’s side. He knelt on the floor next to her chair and took her hand in his, smiling up at her.

“I’m not sure my knees work any more,” she said, a little laugh in her voice. “I hope you don’t expect me to stand up.”

Alexander shook his head. “Not at all. But it will be a lot of work.”

“I know.”

“You did not choose to be a mother last time.”

“I didn’t choose anything, last time. It all sort of… happened to me.” Rosemary freed her hand from his and took his face between her hands, looking intently at him. “But this, I’m choosing. And a hurt and damaged seven-year-old is a lot less scary than an infant I never wanted, you know. You can talk to a seven-year-old. And sometimes they’ll even listen.” She let out a little laugh at that and leaned in close. “And you chose me.”

“From the moment you first interrogated me, though it took me thirty years to figure it out,” Alexander said quietly, reaching up to brush his fingers lightly across her cheek. “Will you marry me, Rosemary?”

She nodded, her eyes full of tears, and then pulled him close and kissed him senseless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [A shitpost comic that is pretty much Cutter's reaction to the outcome of this chapter.](https://madstuart.tumblr.com/post/187849889903/i-have-no-clue-why-i-find-this-as-funny-as-i-do) Rosemary making sure Goddard's xenobiology research doesn't fall apart because the scientist in charge of it is falling apart too? Fine. Rosemary getting married to her boy toy? UNACCEPTABLE.
> 
> A snippet of the actual wedding can be found in [Chapter 4 of The Way They Loved](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247292/chapters/52928665#workskin)


	8. Chapter 8

Getting married had been easy enough—simply a matter of paperwork and an appointment at town hall—and although Adriane had been dubious about the request, she managed to put together a reasonable paper trail that would link Alexander’s current-day alias to Doug Eiffel’s family. Now it had turned into a waiting game, waiting for their application to foster Doug to go through, waiting for the bid Rosemary had put on a house near Goddard’s campus to be accepted, waiting...

Suffice it to say, Alexander was sick of waiting. Fortunately, the first Goddard Futuristics Space Camp was fast approaching, and Alexander threw himself into preparations for it. The research division as a whole had been asked for volunteers willing to teach short classes on their specialties, and he was one among three dozen who had leapt at the chance to do something a little different.

The physical side of the camp was turning into a bit of a slapdash affair. They hadn’t had anywhere on campus to house sixty teens and pre-teens... or at least not until someone on Al’s team had pointed out that they did have pre-fab habitats meant for use on other planets that they could pack full of bunk beds, and the kids were young enough that they’d consider such accommodations an adventure.

But the habitats were also definitely close-quarters living, and strict gender segregation was necessary, which meant that Sam spent the entire lead-up to the start of the camp in a state of anxiety. Not about whether or not he’d be able to participate—he had been assured of a place there the instant it had been announced. But according to Rosemary he was suffering some not-so-small anxieties about which dorm he ought to be staying in.

“Could you talk to him?” Rosemary asked over dinner one evening.

Alexander eyed Rosemary dubiously. “What do I have to offer that cannot be provided by his mother or Al or... or Sterling or Charles or anyone else more qualified to talk to the boy?”

Rosemary shot him an irritable look. “He still doesn’t know Charles and Sterling all that well. And you’re a doctor.”

“And his concerns are of a medical nature?”

“His concern seems to be that he’s just faking being a boy.”

“He is going through puberty. Would perhaps be awkward to be housed with other young men who are not also...”

“I don’t think he could bear going back to living as a girl.”

”No.” Alexander sighed. “I will speak with him.”

It was easy enough to get some time alone with the boy—he and Rosemary and Al all spoiled Sam rotten when they got the chance, and Janie appreciated having teenager-free time for her own forays into having a social life—but getting him to open up was a whole other matter. Sam might be willing to talk the ear of all and sundry off about the potential for life on other planets, but he was remarkably reticent about anything that was personal.

But Sam had reached the age where his stomach was a bottomless pit, so Alexander softened him up by taking him out for a meal at an all-you-can-eat buffet, a location that had simultaneously horrified and fascinated Alexander when he had first come to live in the United States and which suited Sam’s teenaged metabolism well.

“Let us go for walk,” he said afterwards, and they headed to the beach next, Alexander trying not to mind as his shoes filled with sand. He waited until they had walked a good way down the beach from where he had parked Rosemary’s Bug, which she had loaned him for this trip, and then broached the subject. “Rosemary says you are thinking you belong in girl’s dorm?”

Sam blushed. “I mean, I’m a girl, aren’t I?”

“Are you?”

Alexander was quiet while Sam thought this over.

“I don’t know,” Sam said finally, his voice small and hurt. “I… I don’t know. I don’t feel like a girl. I feel… but what if I’m faking?”

Alexander sighed. “Has someone said that you must be faking it?”

Sam dug his toe into the sand, extracting a seashell and sending it down the beach with a little kick. “Mom still seems to think this is just a phase. I was always a tomboy…”

“This tomboy word, I do not understand,” Alexander said, playing up his Russian accent. “But perhaps you were always boy.”

Sam ground to a halt and scooped up another seashell, turning and flinging it into the ocean, followed by another. Alexander just stood quietly by his side, waiting once more.

“How do I know?”

“You said you do not feel like girl.”

“No.”

“Do you want to be boy?”

Sam took a deep, painful breath, straightening his spine. “Yes. I think I do.” He looked up at Alexander anxiously. “Is that all right?”

Alexander nodded, doing his best at a reassuring smile and patting Sam on the shoulder. “Yes.”

Sam looked back out at the ocean, a frown on his face, tensing under Alexander’s hand. “I just… it feels like it’s against the rules, somehow.”

“When I met you, you were boy,” Alexander said, offering the truth in a way that could be read as truth about the present version of Sam Lambert just as easily. “You have always been one to me.”

“I still have a girl’s body, though,” Sam said miserably.

“That can be changed.”

“Really?”

“Really. And even if your mother does not understand, Al and Rosemary and I will be here to help. I promise.”

Sam’s skinny shoulder finally relaxed under Alexander’s hand, and they spent the rest of the walk talking through the specifics—and the pitfalls—of transition.

It took a few more discussions—they all wanted to reassure Sam that if he felt safer in a habitat with girls he could stay there instead—but Sam was suddenly and fiercely determined to continue living as a boy now that he’d found hope for his future, and especially now that they had discussed the first part of his transition. And Rosemary, once she had learned the source of Sam’s reticence, had taken the matter of Janie in hand.

“How did you know that would work?” Alexander asked, settling down on the couch next to Rosemary.

“How did I know what would work?” Rosemary’s distracted question turned into a yawn. “Oh, goodness.”

“Time for us to go to bed, I think. And Sam. How did you know he would listen to me?”

Rosemary looked up at Alexander with a little smile. “Well, I figured you’d be able to say that he had always been a boy to you with a great deal more veracity than any of the rest of us could.”

“Hm.” He removed the report she was editing from her grasp and set it aside on one of the little tables in the living room of her apartment. “Come. Bed.”

She opened her mouth, looking as if she were about to protest, but all that came out was another yawn. “Oh, very well,” she grumbled, letting him pull her to her feet. “But no keeping me up once we’re there, understand?”

“No promises.”

“Terrible man.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was going to try and take this to them getting Doug but instead it's just 2.7k of Rosemary and Hilbert moving in with one another, sorry about that, these two have, in fact, taken over my life.
> 
> Also some Carter being a bitch.

One month to the start of Goddard Space Camp, and their house was ready.

Alexander had spent a surprisingly large part of the past twenty years living in close quarters with other people, the Hephaestus alone accounting for more than a quarter of them. He thought he ought to be inured to any emotions about this sort of thing by now. He had moved in with and managed to live with plenty of people who he actively disliked over the years; surely it would be no great burden to live with a woman he... with a woman he liked.

But tomorrow was moving day, and it turned out that it was a different matter entirely to be moving in to a house with a woman he was distressingly fond of. They had been married for well over a month, but they had each maintained their own apartments in the complex on Goddard’s campus, and although they spent perhaps one night in three together in the same bed just to keep up appearances... well, those nights, no matter how delightful, were no real preparation for living in the same space full time. As much as Alexander hated to admit it, there was no way at all to adequately prepare for what would come; with the addition of Doug, whether in a few weeks or a few months, they would suddenly bear a remarkable resemblance to the so-called nuclear family.

And by the end of the next day, he and Rosemary would be living in the same house, as husband and wife.

Alexander found himself equally terrified and elated by the thought. He had never once expected such things from his life. Had never wanted them. Had scorned them, even. To suddenly want this to work, with every fiber of his being...

He was expecting too much of the situation, that was all. He and Rosemary would no doubt continue to live separate lives, in their separate bedrooms, in a house that was big enough for a family twice the size of the one they would have the appearance of once Doug joined them.

His own packing had taken less than an hour, his belongings encompassing little more than the clothing Goddard had provided for him after he had abandoned his entire life in Russia, a year and a half in the United States hardly enough time to acquire much more. Rosemary, on the other hand, had been living in her apartment for more than fifteen years, and while none of the larger items in the apartment actually belonged to her, she had managed to build up quite the collection over that time, and she had been so overwhelmed by the thought of packing it all up that Alexander wasn’t certain she would have managed it without his help. Fortunately, at this point all that was left was the depths of her closet and her chest of drawers, but even that was turning into a monumental task.

“How many wigs do you own?”

“I honestly don’t remember,” she said, deigning to look embarrassed. “Some of those are awfully old.”

“Could we not get rid of the old ones?”

“We could.” Her voice was hesitant, and she fingered the fringe of the wig she was holding with a frown.

“We do not need to take care of this today,” Alexander said gently. “Simply... consider.”

“They save me time.” Rosemary’s tone had turned from hesitant to a little querulous. And then she shut her eyes for a moment and laughed painfully. “I hate them. I hate—“ she threw the wig she was holding on the ground. “I hate that I feel like I have to look _pretty_. I hate that I’m so goddamn vain that the thought of going outside without all of this—“ she gestured violently at the well-tailored suit she was wearing, at her beautifully made-up face, at the perfectly coiffed wig “—makes me feel sick to my stomach.”

He had teased her for being vain, the last time around. She had clung to her makeup and heels and wigs, even as her body started to fall apart, until even she had to recognize that they had made a grotesquerie of her.

But this wasn’t vanity, he realized suddenly. He stooped and picked the wig up, dusting it off. “This is your armor, yes? It keeps you safe.” He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. “So for now, we will preserve your armor. And perhaps one day you will wish to go without it, but if you do not...” he kissed her forehead. _I will love you all the same, _he thought, but didn’t dare say out loud. “But if you do not, then you do not. It does not matter.”

The rest of the packing went quickly, after that. Simply getting things in boxes until there were no more things, and then… and then a night spent in his own apartment, with the boxes that contained his clothing looming large in the corner of the room.

The next morning the movers came early, and Al with them, so that when Alexander and Rosemary’s things were all packed aboard the truck, she left him with Al to do final checks on the apartments and went ahead to direct the movers at the house. They were going through the kitchen in Rosemary’s apartment when William Carter appeared.

Carter stepped in and looked around with barely-disguised disgust on his face—well, the man lived in a mansion and had no doubt never set foot in the on-site apartments—before signaling Al. “I’d like a moment with our dear Dr. Kelley.”

Al simply nodded and slipped around Carter, heading towards the living room, though he paused long enough to shoot Alexander a brief concerned look over Carter’s shoulder.

Carter didn’t say anything at first. He stared at Alexander for what felt like an extremely long time, a frown on his face, the only sounds in the room from Al shuffling aside furniture in the living room.

Finally, Alexander gave in to his slowly growing irritation. He cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows significantly at Carter. “You wished to speak to me?”

“Why _you_?” Carter looked Alexander up and down irritably. “I don’t know _what_ Rosemary sees in you. Do you?”

A hysterical laugh bubbled up in Alexander’s throat. He defused it with a cough. “No.”

“Well, don’t get too comfortable in your little domestic life. She belongs to Goddard. She always will.”

Alexander raised his eyebrows once more, indicating a surprise he didn’t really feel. But this was the only way to deal with Carter; half-truths and theatrical reactions. “You might see her as a possession, but she does not belong to anyone but herself. And is it not better to have her where she is now?”

Carter flashed a sharp, deadly grin. “All right, I’ll admit it. I mourn the loss of her management skills, but I _do_ look forward to seeing what she’ll produce now that she’s finally back in the lab. And that’s why I’m letting you keep Decima.”

Alexander’s heart thumped in his chest. It had not occurred to him that his control over Decima might be at stake here.

It should have.

“It will work,” Alexander responded. “But not if you remove it from my care.”

That got another shark-like smile from Carter. “We’ll see.” He gave the kitchen another look of disgust, and then turned to go, pausing in the doorway to look back at Alexander. “I expect you both back in the lab on Monday.”

“We would not dream of doing otherwise,” Alexander said with a calm he did not feel.

Al ducked his head back into the kitchen after Carter was gone. “You did well,” he said in his calm baritone.

Alexander scoffed, shaking off what remained of the terror that facing down Carter always left him with. “I have been dealing with that man’s threats for nearly three decades now. I know how to say what he wishes to hear.”

“Mm. Ready to go join Rosie?”

“Very well.”

Rosemary was directing the last of the boxes from her apartment when they arrived. And then, it was time for Alexander’s few possessions… “In the master bedroom,” she said decisively to the movers.

“I thought that was your room.” Alexander crossed over to the pile of boxes that were stacked in the middle of the living room and pulled out his keys, using them to break into one of the boxes. Ah. Reference books.

“I thought we could share.”

Alexander almost dropped the book he had just pulled out of the box, fumbling wildly in midair for it. Rosemary appeared at his side and grabbed the next book from the box.

“If you’d rather not…” she said. “Only, I was thinking that they’ll be doing regular check-ins with us once Doug gets here, you know, just to make sure that we’re providing properly for him, and I thought that maybe it would look strange if we were keeping separate bedrooms if we’re supposed to be a married couple, and it’s fine if you want to sleep in the spare room instead—”

Alexander set his book down again and took the book Rosemary was clinging to out of her hands as she spoke. “You are babbling. And yes. I would…” He paused, and smiled. “I would very much like…” He shook his head, not finding the right words. “Yes. We should share bedroom. For all the reasons you say.”

Rosemary gave him an awkward smile… and Al pushed between the pair of them, breaking the moment. “The movers just finished, so one of you two had best go get them paid. Leave the bookshelf to me.”

Rosemary hit Al on the arm. “You’re going to put them all in the wrong places!”

“Your books will be fine, Rosie.”

“I will keep an eye on him,” Alexander added reassuringly.

Rosemary shot them both a baleful glare, but turned on her heel and made for the front door, where one of the moving crew was waiting patiently.

“I don’t really need your help for this, doctor. I was just needling Rosie.”

“I know.” Alexander pulled out several more books and dumped them on a shelf. “I simply… need a moment.”

“Huh.”

He and Al worked in silence for a few minutes, putting the bookshelves in the living room into some semblance of order as they went. Alexander found that he could not shake his awareness of Rosemary’s presence, not even when she slipped past them to get to the stairs. “It looks like the two of you have this in hand, so I suppose I’ll go get my suits unpacked before they get too wrinkled from being thrown in a box like that,” she said.

“You should join her,” Al said once the click of her heels became muffled by the carpet on the upstairs landing.

“Still need a moment.” Alexander did his best to focus on the routine motions of the task at hand, shelving almost mindlessly.

“You going to say something to her about that?”

“About what?”

Al clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “About the fact that you’re head over heels for her.”

“Head over heels?”

“You light up when you look at her. Don’t know what the two of you were talking about when I came over here, but you just about burnt out my retinas with that glow.”

“That is entirely too much metaphor,” Alexander muttered, despite the fact that his English was more than good enough these days to understand what Al was hinting at.

“All I’m saying is that you need to go up those stairs and tell that woman you love her,” Al said casually. “All romantic-like, however that works.”

“Says the man with a known aversion to romance,” Alexander shot back.

“Just because I don’t want it for myself doesn’t mean I can’t see it when it exists.” Al scooped the remaining books in the box out in one big armful. “Of course, this also means that if you hurt her, I’ll kill ya and no one will ever find the body.”

“Of that, I am certain, assuming that Rosemary does not get to me first,” Alexander said tartly. “And I think I _will_ leave you to these books.”

“Go get her, tiger.”

“Please never call me that again.”

“Best of luck, champ!” Al called after Alexander as he made his way up the stairs.

“That is even worse!” Alexander yelled back.

The cheer that Al’s banter had left him with faded the instant he entered the bedroom. Rosemary was sitting in the middle of a pile of open boxes, tears running down her face.

“Rosemary?”

She looked up, startled, and swiped wildly at her face with the backs of her hands. “Oh! Sorry.”

Alexander shook his head and nudged a box aside with his foot so that he could kneel next to her and offer up his handkerchief. “Nothing to be sorry about.”

“It’s just so much.” She dabbed at her cheeks and then frowned. “And now I’ve gotten makeup all over your handkerchief.”

“I am here to provide whatever assistance you need.”

Rosemary gave him a watery smile. “Thank you.”

As much as he wanted to, it was difficult to remember to offer that assistance unprompted, especially with Goddard Space Camp fast approaching. Alexander had committed to as many classes as he could get away with, and, as he told Rosemary, he needed to be there for the final planning stages. And he already felt as if he had missed too much; the move had stolen every spare moment he had for weeks.

When the call came in on a Friday a few weeks later, letting them know that the agency was finally willing to release Doug to Alexander and Rosemary’s care—as long as they came up to Boston that weekend to sign the paperwork and gather the boy themselves, of course—he hadn’t wanted to go. “Could you not handle bringing him home? I will be here once you return, I do not intend to leave you alone with the boy, but surely—“

“He won’t be coming home if I’m the only one there,” Rosemary said bitterly. “I know you’ve got a high opinion of my abilities, but I go alone and they’ll take one look at this—” she gestured at her face, lines of anxiety tight at the corners of her mouth and eyes, “—and they’ll come up with reasons to not let him come with me.”

Alexander stared at her blankly, not understanding. “You look very young for your age. Surely they would not... not on the basis of age.”

Rosemary let out a despairing little laugh and shook her head. “Darling, you’ve lived among Americans for almost thirty years. Please tell me you’re not still that naive.”

“I do not understand.”

“Doug’s white, or close enough to pass.”

“Yes.” Alexander frowned, still not understanding.

“I’m not.”

Alexander felt his eyebrows shoot up his forehead in surprise. “They would refuse to let you bring Doug home simply because you are...”

“Black? Yes.” Rosemary gave him a pitying look. “Welcome to America.”

Alexander reached for her and she fell against him with a sigh. “I am sorry. I should have realized.”

“Yes, you should have,” came her muffled response from where she had buried her face against his shoulder.

“I recall it being big event when Black president was elected, but—“

Rosemary lifted her head so quickly that she almost head-butted Alexander in the chin. “We get a Black president? When?”

“Almost twenty years.”

“Definitely something to live for.”

“Oh, and I am not?”

“Compared to a Black president?” She sounded dubious... and was definitely teasing him.

“Suka.”

“Oh, you like it.”

“I do.” Alexander kissed Rosemary on the tip of her nose. “When does plane leave?” He had no doubt that she had already arranged for transportation with her usual efficiency, most likely as soon as she had gotten the call.

“At an absolutely horrendous hour tomorrow morning. Which means we should go to bed.”

“_Well_, then...” Alexander tightened his arms around her middle.

Rosemary blushed and swatted him on the shoulder. “Oh, be good. We _do _actually need to sleep tonight.”

“No promises.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for wee!Doug. Finally.

They made it to their flight the next morning with plenty of time. The last time Alexander had flown had been well into the 2000s, and he had forgotten what pre-9-11 security was like… or rather, what it wasn’t like, as it was practically nonexistent in comparison.

Rosemary dozed on the flight, her head tucked against his shoulder, only waking up as they landed. She lifted her head and yawned when they were making the final approach to the airport, blinking blearily at him. “Goodness.”

Alexander frowned and reached out to prod Rosemary’s wig into its usual pristine shape. He had been so busy with his own lab and with the work he was doing to prepare for the summer camp that he had not thought about the fact that Rosemary had to be feeling the pressure just as much as he had been. They had moved together, but she had made all the arrangements that had seen their house purchased and furnished, had taken over most of the communication with the agency managing Doug’s case, had been the one fetching most of the reports on the other children from Adriane under the pretext of reviewing old xenobiology projects.

He realized suddenly that he had no idea what progress she had been making on taking over control of the xenobiology lab from Eber Weiss, but that on top of everything else she had accomplished over the past few months… Well, that put her breakdown the day of the move into an entirely different light. And then, there was that strange confrontation with Carter—had Rosemary had one of those of her own? Was that why Carter had been so certain that this wouldn’t last?

He brushed her bangs to one side, less to fix her wig and more to get a good look at her face. “You are all right?”

Rosemary smiled up at him, a bright, fake smile that worried him. “Perfect.”

Alexander frowned and opened his mouth to interrogate her further, but there was the thump of the airplane door opening, and all around them their fellow passengers were standing and opening the overhead bins to fetch down their luggage. Rosemary sprang to her feet to follow their example, but of course, things had shifted during the flight, and their overnight bag was out of her reach. She snatched it from Alexander when he got to his feet and pulled it down for her.

“We’ve got an appointment at eleven, which should give us more than enough time to check into our hotel and grab a proper breakfast somewhere.” She bustled her way down the aisle of the plane and out into the airport, making her way through the crowds efficiently and towing Alexander along in her wake.

Rosemary kept up a mindless sort of chatter—not about work, as she usually would have, but about Alexander’s former crewmates, about Boston, and, most incongruously for her, about the weather—for the entire taxi ride to their hotel. He thought she might be trying to deflect his concern, but it only worried him more.

But finally, they were checked in to their room, had stowed the overnight bag, had a moment to breathe.

Rosemary didn’t seem to want to take it. “Now, Al’s up this way a lot more than I am, so I asked him for some recommendations. Shall we go find some breakfast?”

Alexander shook his head. “They do room service here?”

Rosemary froze where she was, almost halfway back to the door of the hotel room, and turned back towards him. “They do. You don’t want fancy pastries?”

He adored fancy pastries and she knew it. A low blow, that. But he shook his head once again. “Would rather sit and talk with you.”

She gave him a blank look. “About what?”

“Something is wrong. Something you are not telling me.”

“I really don’t know what you mean.” And he might have believed her, if he had not seen her lie so many times over the years.

“Rosemary. Please.”

She shut her eyes and took a deep breath. “They found a mass.”

Alexander let out a low hiss of breath. He had expected many possibilities, had expected her to say that Carter would not leave her be, or that she was not capable of living up to the burdens that Alexander had placed on her.

The thought that cancer was already threatening...

“Al sent me to his doctor,” Rosemary continued in a blank, dull voice. “I told him it was five years before I start dying of it, but he insisted... well, anyway. It’s a small one, and it might just be a cyst, but they’re doing a biopsy on Monday, just in case.” She swallowed hard and opened her eyes again, looking apologetic. “I didn’t want to tell you until I had results.”

She had kept it from him last time, too, had received her diagnosis mere weeks before his first space mission and had kept it so secret that he would never have guessed that she was ill.

“Why?” he asked now, knowing the answer would be the same as last time.

Rosemary shrugged awkwardly. “I didn’t want you to worry.”

“And if it is cancer?”

“I was planning to wait until August to tell you. You’re going to be run off your feet for the next month and a half.”

“Rosemary.” Her name came out strangled and harsh from Alexander’s throat, and he took three steps in her direction and reached for her, tugging her against his chest and hugging her as tightly as he dared.

“If it is, we caught it early. Earlier than we could have hoped. It’s good.” Her voice was muffled against his collar and that last word came out on a sob. Alexander felt hot tears against his neck, felt her hands grip hard against his shirt. “It’s just a lot. You, and the job, and... it’s a lot of change, all at once, and I’m an old lady who was awfully set in her ways before you came along.”

Alexander didn’t know how to respond. He buried his nose in her wig and kept her close, rocking her gently in his arms for as long as she would let him.

They didn’t get breakfast, in the end, or at least not a proper one. Instead it was coffee and a bag of donuts from a chain with an astonishingly bright pink and orange sign, snatched up with no time to eat them on their way to the agency that handled Doug’s case.

Alexander had been left with the distinct impression that there was still more to discuss when she had finally pulled herself back from him, diving for the tissue box with a screech about how they would be late.Those tears had been real, but he would not put it beyond her to have used them as a diversionary tactic, all the same.

But what worried him most of all was that he should have been the one to insist that Rosemary see a new doctor. No, he should have done the physical himself. And it had not occurred to him to do so. He had been so perfectly content to keep her by his side, to put forth a semblance of caring for her needs, that he had not noticed that he wasn’t actually caring for her. That despite the bedroom, the life they now shared, he still treated her as if her burdens were hers alone to bear.

He should have known about this. Rosemary should have felt comfortable enough to come to him, and she had not, and he had only himself to blame. And now there was no time to fix it. Now they were about to complicate their lives with the addition of a child, and there would be no more quiet nights with just the two of them in their home. Not for some time.

They came to a halt in front of a building as Rosemary frowned at the address and then at the piece of paper she had in hand. And then, she looked up at Alexander with an anxious expression on her face.

“How do I look?”

He looked her over carefully. She had taken the time to redo her makeup, to change her suit into one that was a warm cream, very different from the bright colors she usually preferred. The bangs of her wig were soft and framed her face, her lipstick was carefully neutral, and there was the string of pearls she had asked for his assistance in getting around her neck. A very different creature than Rosemary as he knew her. A strange, carefully put-together persona who felt like a stranger.

“Pristine,” he said. “Like field of fresh snow.”

“Good. We might just get through this.”

She took the lead into the lobby of the building and up to an office on the fourth floor. Alexander found himself gritting his teeth as the receptionist’s eyes slid past Rosemary and onto him.

“You’re here for an appointment?”

Only a sharp look from Rosemary stopped Alexander from protesting. He approached the glassed-in desk. “Dr. Karl Kelley.”

“Ah. You’re here for Doug Eiffel.” The receptionist shuffled through some papers on her desk. “His case manager will be out to see you in a moment, but here’s some paperwork to review.” The receptionist slid him a clipboard, and Alexander took it and stepped back from the desk towards one of the chairs in the waiting room.

Rosemary started to follow him.

“Are you here to make an appointment?” The receptionist called out, her tone snide.

Rosemary froze, and turned, and from the sliver of her profile that Alexander could see, she was barely containing her anger. He sprang back to his feet and returned to her side. “Come, kotik. We have paperwork to review,” he said, tucking her arm around his.

To her credit, the receptionist turned bright red. “Oh. Oh! You must be Mrs. Kelley. I’m so sorry.”

Rosemary gave the woman a tight smile. “It’s fine.”

“Miss Epps,” Alexander said.

“It’s fine—“ Rosemary protested.

Alexander cut her off. “No. You kept maiden name. She should call you by correct name.” He glared down his nose at the receptionist.

“It really is fine,” Rosemary said in a low tone when he drew her down into a chair at his side.

Alexander frowned. “You knew it would be like this.”

Rosemary cleared her throat. “I suspected. I hoped it wouldn’t be this bad, but, well... I’ve been dealing with women like that all my life.” She lowered her voice to a murmur, barely audible. “Just wait. I would bet you a year of salary that someone is going to comment on how articulate I am.”

Alexander stared at her, aghast, and she used his distraction to steal the clipboard from his lap.

“Now, let’s see how many times they call me Rosemary Kelley in this paperwork, despite me faxing them multiple forms of I.D. and our marriage certificate...”

Every instance of her name had to be found, fixed, and initialed. By the time they were called back to see Doug’s caseworker, Alexander was furious.

The woman behind the desk was dressed almost exactly the same way as Rosemary, down to the pearls. “Josephine Marsh,” the case manager said, offering a hand to Alexander. “Glad to finally meet you, Dr. Kelley.” She glanced past him to Rosemary. “And this is...?”

Rosemary stepped forward and took Josephine Marsh’s hand once Alexander had finished shaking it. “Rosemary Epps,” she said with a carefully polite smile. “We spoke on the phone.”

“I see,” Josephine said, carefully extracting her hand from Rosemary’s, her own carefully polite smile suddenly stiff. “I didn’t expect... you’re very articulate.”

Suddenly, Alexander was hard-pressed not to laugh.

“I’m college-educated, same as you,” Rosemary said, a little smirk Alexander thought only he could see turning up the corner of her mouth. “Is there any reason I wouldn’t be… articulate?” She raised her eyebrows to punctuate the last word.

Josephine was now flushed and flustered, and she shuffled through the papers on her desk. “Of course not!” she exclaimed, followed by a panicked little titter. “Have a seat, both of you. I see Hope gave you the paperwork to review. Any questions?”

“Ah, yes. I am wondering why my wife’s name was incorrect in every instance it occurred?” Alexander kept his voice calm and bland as he handed the annotated paperwork over.

“You know what, let me just... I’ll just go have a talk with my secretary and see if I can get an updated copy of that for you,” Josephine said, her voice still panicked. She took the paperwork and left the room.

Alexander leaned towards Rosemary. “She does not have a college education, does she.”

“About two semesters of one, but then she got married to a fellow from her daddy’s firm with plenty of money,” Rosemary responded in a low voice. “And now that her children are out of the house, this is her hobby. One she isn’t properly licensed for, though the paperwork certainly looks like it’s all in order.”

“I see.” He paused, and considered the most likely vector for this information. “Adriane is terrifying.”

Rosemary gave him a naughty little grin. “You don’t know the half of it.”

Josephine came back into the room just then, and Rosemary’s naughty grin turned back into a bland smile.

“Would the two of you like to go meet Doug? It will take them a little while to fix the paperwork.” Josephine seemed calmer now, if strangely reluctant to let her gaze rest on Rosemary for more than a second or two.

“That would be lovely.” Rosemary got to her feet, beaming up at Josephine as if the woman hadn’t just insulted her… and as if Rosemary herself hadn’t lobbed an insult back, albeit one for which she had a great deal of plausible deniability.

They followed Josephine out of the building and down the street. The woman kept up a stream of chatter about the weather—“It’s so humid today, but of course, you’re from Florida, so you’d be used to that,”—and Doug—“And of course we were so pleased to hear that he had a relative willing to take him in, you know, he’s been with us for three years, but he’s a difficult child, a very sweet boy, of course, but, well, you know how children are.”

The building the group home was in was dingy. Well cared for in most respects; everything looked like it was in good repair. But lived-in, and not as clean as it could be. They were stowed in a living room with Josephine, who kept up the awkward chatter, managing to completely avoid addressing any remarks to Rosemary that might require an answer all the while. It was really quite a remarkable feat.

And then a young man lead a skinny child into the room, and Alexander stopped paying even the slightest amount of attention to what Josephine was saying. Alexander got to his feet from where he’d been sitting on one of the beaten-down couches in the living room. “Could we have moment alone with Doug?”

“Oh, yes!”

The door closed behind Josephine and the young man who had brought Doug, and Alexander found himself staring down at a miniature version of a man who had been equal parts an annoyance and—quite reluctantly on both their parts—a friend.

Doug glared up at Alexander. “Are you really my cousin?”

Alexander couldn’t bring himself to answer with the lie they were pretending was truth. Fortunately, Rosemary got to her feet and joined them. “Yes, he is.”

Doug turned his glare on Rosemary. “Why doesn’t he have any hair?”

“Radiation poisoning,” came Rosemary’s response on Alexander’s behalf.

“Radiation? Like Spiderman?”

Alexander started laughing and couldn’t stop. Oh, this was definitely Doug Eiffel. He fell back onto the couch and doubled over, pushing his glasses onto his forehead as he laughed until he cried.

Over the sound of his laughter, he heard Doug and Rosemary continue their conversation. “He’s really weird,” Doug said, sounding dubious.

“Yes, he is isn’t he?” There was the rustle of a paper bag. “You want a donut?”

“Really? What kind?”

“Boston creme.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“How about you sit down next to your cousin and give him one too?”

There was the creak of couch springs, and Doug was at his side, nudging Alexander with one bony shoulder. “You want a donut?”

Alexander pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes dry before letting his glasses drop back to his nose. “I think that Rosemary bought those to bribe you.”

“I’m an equal opportunity briber,” Rosemary said dryly. “The laughter was getting scary, darling. Have a donut and get your blood sugar back to normal.”

Doug offered him the bag of donuts and Alexander dug one out, suddenly starving.

“So you have super powers or something?” Doug asked around his own mouthful of donut.

“Unfortunately, no. Radiation does not make superheroes in real world.” And the donut, while a bit squashed, was a glorious creation of sugar and dough and pastry cream.

Doug frowned into his donut. “Are you sure? You don’t have any super powers at all?”

“Is not being able to grow hair a super power?” Alexander asked.

“Not a very good one.”

Rosemary had settled on Doug’s other side and had claimed a donut for herself by now, and for the next little while they sat there on the couch together in silence.

“They said you’re taking me home,” Doug said quietly.

“Yes.” That, at least, was not a lie.

“You’ll just want to bring me back in a week. Everyone else did.”

There was a soft, startled exhale from Rosemary, and Alexander turned his attention to Doug’s frowning face. “Do you want to stay here?”

Doug shrugged awkwardly.

“If you want to stay, you can.” Rosemary held out her hand to Doug. “I know it’s scary, going to a new place where you don’t know anyone. Especially when you don’t know if you can trust us to take care of you. But if you do want to come with us, we promise that you will not be sent back, and you will always have enough to eat and a room that’s all your own. For as long as you need one, no matter how difficult you are.”

Doug stared at Rosemary for a long, quiet moment, and then, suddenly, there were tears pouring down his face. Rosemary reached out cautiously and patted Doug on the back, and suddenly he flung himself against her chest, sobbing. Rosemary looked a little taken aback, but wrapped her arms around the boy as Alexander did his best to rescue the remains of Doug’s donut. Not quickly enough, unfortunately; there would definitely be chocolate smears on that pristine cream-colored suit of hers.

Alexander patted Doug gingerly on the back, and Rosemary gave him a grateful look over Doug’s shoulder. She looked overwhelmed—not unhappy, just as if too much was happening all at once—and strangely determined, too.

Alexander knew why he had chosen this. Knew what it was like to be the age that Doug was, and to be unwanted by everyone. He wondered, now, if Rosemary had some reason to want this for herself, outside of the fact that Alexander was determined to do it.

She had given up her son, once. Had married a man who was not her child’s father, and had left them both behind as soon as she was able.

Perhaps for her, this was a chance to finally face that part of her past and make peace with it.


	11. Chapter 11

What was more upsetting than Doug’s tears, in the end, was the cold and quiet terror on the boy’s face when he finally calmed down enough to notice the smears of chocolate frosting he had left on Rosemary’s jacket.

“It’s only clothing, darling,” Rosemary had said with a reassuring smile. “I don’t even like this suit.”

But Doug had been pale and shaking, and even that gentle reassurance wasn’t enough to make things better. Alexander found himself wondering if one of those previous situations Doug has been released to had done worse than just bring Doug back after a week.

The woman from the agency—Josephine, that was her name—knocked on the door and came in without waiting for a response. “I just called back to the office. The updated paperwork is ready.”

“And we can take Doug with us after we’ve signed everything?” Rosemary asked, glancing at Alexander anxiously, a question in her eyes.

“Well, he’ll need to get packed first...”

Alexander met Rosemary’s eye and nodded.

“We’ll go with him now and help him pack his things. I want him with us when we sign the paperwork,” Rosemary declared, turning her attention back to Josephine. “I want him to know we’re not going to disappear on him.”

On the couch between them, Doug burst into overwhelmed-sounding sobs again, and Alexander silently offered up his handkerchief to the boy and then, once Doug took it, wrapped his arms around Doug’s skinny shoulders and pulled Doug against his side.

“Well, I... you know I’d have to talk to the manager here...”

Rosemary raised her eyebrows dangerously. “Then what are you waiting for?”

They sat silently once Josephine left, Alexander keeping Doug tucked protectively at his side, Rosemary pulling some tissues out of her purse and carefully dabbing away the worst of the smear of chocolate that Doug had left on her jacket. Eventually, she gave up with a shrug. “I was planning to get rid of this suit after this trip anyway,” she said, breaking the silence. “Cream is an awful color.”

Doug snuffled into the handkerchief and Alexander ruffled the boy’s hair absentmindedly as he stared off into space. “It is not up to your usual standards, it is true. But you do look very nice in it.” He glanced Rosemary’s way in time to see her blush and duck her head sideways, an awkward, embarrassed move. Strange, that he could discomfit her in that way.

“I like my bright colors better.” She turned her attention to Doug, who was wearing a grey t-shirt and a pair of ratty denim shorts. “Do you have a lot to pack?”

Doug peered over Alexander’s handkerchief at her and shook his head.

“We’ll have to fix that, then. Maybe not here, but when we get back to Florida. You look like you could use something new to wear. A lot of somethings new.”

Doug frowned and lowered the handkerchief further. “Are you _rich_?” he asked, and then clapped his hand over his mouth, as if realizing he had asked something that most people would consider rude.

Rosemary laughed. She might as well find such bluntness amusing; the rewards Rosemary had reaped over the years for being one of the few people Dr. Pryce tolerated having in her lab had been vast. After fifteen years of further investments, even with Rosemary’s fondness for well-tailored suits and the money she sent to her son’s family, it added up to quite an astounding sum. “Rich enough to buy you all new everything, if it comes to that. So don’t you pack anything you don’t like, hm?”

Doug was staring at Rosemary in a mixture of caution and awe. An extremely familiar mix of emotions where Rosemary was concerned, Alexander found himself thinking.

Josephine returned with a middle-aged man in short order, and they all went together to a room on the next floor, one packed tight with three bunk beds and a single chest of drawers. The sum total of Doug’s current possessions barely filled one of the drawers, and they were given a garbage bag to put everything in. Doug looked embarrassed by it, as if he would rather not have had them both there.

“I think I’m just going to go have a _word_ with the manager of this place,” Rosemary said, eying the trash bag with distaste. She bustled out of the room and Alexander was left alone with Doug, who was still avoiding Alexander’s eye.

Alexander shook the bag open and knelt at Doug’s side. “Do not worry. I have always been very shabby. When I was too old for home I had been living at, they gave me sack for potatoes to put my clothing in.”

Doug, who had started cleaning his drawer out, paused and looked at Alexander with surprise. “You lived in a home?”

Alexander nodded solemnly. “Until I was eighteen.” And Doug would have as well, Alexander remembered. Would have lived here until he joined the Air Force, just to get away. Alexander had at least had the option of college. Doug would not have even had that.

Alexander had often found all of that wasted potential frustrating when interacting with Doug as an adult. For the first time, however, he found himself realizing just how much he could change that... and wondering whether he had any right to, in the end.

Doug dumped his last pile of t-shirts into the bag and Alexander absentmindedly cinched it closed. “All set?”

“Yes.”

Alexander got to his feet and heaved the bag over his shoulder before offering Doug a hand. “Then let us go see what trouble Rosemary has gotten into.”

They found her down the hall, having a very polite—and very pointed—discussion with both Josephine and the manager about how it would really cost very little to see to it that each of their residents had some basic luggage available to them, that of course they had a very tight budget, but there was something to be said for dignity, wasn’t there? Alexander let her finish her current sentence and then cleared his throat meaningfully.

“Darling. Is Doug all ready? Is there anyone you want to say goodbye to?” She directed the last at Doug, and when he shook his head, she wrapped an arm around his shoulders and nodded to Josephine. “We’re ready to sign that paperwork now.”

Whatever else that unseen discussion had consisted of had managed to cow Josephine entirely, though Alexander was not entirely certain that the simpering they had to put up with from the woman was worth it. But it wasn’t for long; the paperwork was signed and Doug was officially theirs—pending a few welfare checks in the near future—and they were free to go.

Rosemary sent them on ahead of her for a moment, though Alexander could not imagine why she would want to spend any more time alone with Josephine than she had already spent. And from her air of self-satisfaction when she joined them outside of the building, Alexander wasn’t sure he wanted to know... and rather wondered if they needed to flee the scene in a hurry.

“You have not murdered the woman, suka?”

Rosemary laughed. “Now, Sasha, darling, what an idea of me you’ll put in Doug’s head. But no, Josephine Marsh can live another day.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

Doug had a confused expression on his face. “Who’s Sasha? Isn’t that a girl’s name?”

“Sasha is short for Alexander,” Alexander responded automatically. “It is my name.”

“I thought your name was Karl. Josephine was calling you Karl.”

Alexander exchanged a panicked look with Rosemary. They both automatically referred to him with his last alias when the two of them were alone with one another, but it had not occurred to either of them that this might be a problem once they added Doug to their household.

“Well,” Rosemary said slowly, her eyes very wide, her mind obviously trying to figure out what to say to the boy. “Sometimes people have nicknames…”

“Alexander isn’t a nickname for Karl.” Doug’s eyes opened wide as well, and he looked suddenly excited. “Wait, is it a code name? Are you a spy?”

Alexander blinked blankly down at Doug. The boy had gotten distressingly close to the truth of the matter. “Not… not exactly,” he said weakly.

“Dmitri,” Rosemary said in a warning tone, and then clapped her hand over her mouth.

“Oh, suka…”

“What does suka mean? And are you called Dmitri too?”

Alexander cleared his throat. “You know, I think that is a conversation for another day.” Better to not teach the boy to curse in Russian, or at least not this young.

“How many names do you have?”

“Definitely a conversation for another day,” Rosemary said. “How about lunch? Anywhere you like.”

“Is this another bribe?” Doug asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Then I want to go to McDonalds.”

Rosemary’s face was twisted by a pained smile, and Alexander wondered if she was thinking the same thing he was: what a small, constrained life Doug must have lived so far, if McDonald’s was a sufficient bribe. “Then let’s take your clothing back to our hotel room and find a McDonald’s,” she said, offering her hand to Doug. “And then maybe we can have a talk about code names.”

“I want my code name to be Michaelangelo.”

“Michaelangelo?” Alexander frowned. “Is he not a painter?”

“He’s a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle,” Doug said. “He likes pizza.”

Alexander swallowed a bubble of hysterical laughter. He had worried about changing Doug Eiffel, about whether he even had the right to… but in order to change Doug Eiffel, Alexander would have to learn how to understand what on earth Doug was even talking about.

So yes, Alexander Hilbert might wind up changing Doug Eiffel… but Doug Eiffel might wind up changing Alexander Hilbert into someone new as well.


	12. Chapter 12

Rosemary had frowned at Doug when they stopped in the hotel room to drop his few belongings off and had asked him if he minded putting off his bribe a little longer, because, as she said, “It really would be better if we went home this evening instead of tomorrow morning, wouldn’t it? I’ll just call up the airline and see if I can switch the flight.”

Alexander had only been able to agree with her.

Doug was equal parts restless and withdrawn for the rest of the day, culminating in even more tears that started when they boarded their plane back to Florida that evening and which did not stop until he fell asleep against Rosemary’s shoulder. Alexander watched them from across the aisle, his heart aching. He felt as if his entire life had been thrown off balance, as if everything was about to change, and he could not say whether that change would be good or bad.

Of course, everything about his life had already changed completely over the past year and a half. He would no doubt adjust to this change as well, given time.

Doug was drooling on the shoulder of Rosemary’s jacket, and she shot Alexander a rueful look. She had ruined that pristine cream-colored suit further at lunch, Alexander thought deliberately, letting condiments drip down the front and commenting that Doug and his smear of chocolate frosting hadn’t done any worse than she had herself, goodness she was clumsy. When they had gone back to the hotel room to grab their luggage, she had taken the time to change back into the bright purple suit she had started the day in... a suit which would no doubt need to be dry-cleaned posthaste to rescue it from the drool that now adorned it.

It had surprised Alexander, how much he had missed the bright colors despite the fact that they had only been missing for a few hours. Rosemary might have looked stunning in cream and pearls, but it had not been her, not really. It had been a mask, a persona, a way for her to blend in and protect herself.

Sometimes he wondered how much of this was a mask, too.

She had married him. She had married him, and they slept in the same bed each night, and now they had a child, and he still was not sure of her. That she would not betray him to Carter, he was certain. That she enjoyed his company—that she found him appealing, in a base, physical manner—he was also sure of.

But he wanted more than that.

And he worried, just a little, that he had just lost his last chance at it.

Not that he would have left Doug in that home. No, taking Doug from that place had been the right choice. But now Alexander was regretting the past months, the late nights in the lab and at curriculum meetings. He was regretting meals snatched together at haste, if they even managed to eat together at all, was regretting all those times he had not taken the time to ask Rosemary how she was, what she had done with her day, all because he had been too preoccupied with matters of his own.

He had missed her, and he was still missing her, day by day, one lost opportunity after another.

Now Alexander suspected that all the pair of them would have time for outside of work was Doug. He thought back to his own youth, imagined that someone had come and had chosen to take him home. Imagined how that would have felt.

He would have been angry. Angry and sad and joyful, all emotions too large for such a small person as he had once been, as Doug currently was. They would be facing down temper tantrums and stubbornness. Not because Doug wanted to be feeling those things, to be doing such things, but because the boy would feel compelled to test the pair of them, compelled to try and find a way to render Rosemary’s promise that they would not send Doug back a lie. They were in for a fight, not just against Doug’s very real trauma and fear, but against their own worst natures.

Alexander hoped they would win.

It was a late night by the time they got back to the house that was slowly becoming a home, even if Alexander still felt it was too large for three people. When Alexander deposited the boy in his new bedroom, Doug had insisted that he would rather put his own belongings away, shame radiating off every line of his small body. Alexander left him there with the duffle they had purchased in the airport to hold Doug’s plastic bag of clothing and went to check on Rosemary.

She was in their bedroom and had already changed out of the purple suit and into a pair of pajamas, and she was in the middle of wiping away what remained of her makeup, considerably less pristine after the hours of humid weather it had been through. Alexander sat on the edge of the bed, ostensibly to rid himself of his shoes and socks, but just as much to put himself at the right level to watch Rosemary’s tired face in the mirror over her dressing table.

“Doug all settled in?”

“He wished to unpack by himself.”

Rosemary’s reflection looked worried and tense. “I hope he’ll settle in all right. I’ll have to take him shopping tomorrow.”

“We will, yes.”

Rosemary set the makeup wipe down and put her hands to her wig, hunting down bobby pins and deftly plucking them free. “Didn’t you say you’d be missing a curriculum meeting if you stayed away all weekend?”

“And as far as they know, I will still be away all weekend.” Alexander should have continued to prepare for bed, but found himself caught by the expression on Rosemary’s face. “Let me go with you.”

Rosemary bit her lower lip and frowned. “I’d rather you take the time off on Monday morning. Janie’s taking me in for the biopsy, but I didn’t really reckon on Doug being here. I’d feel better having you spend the day with him than have to drag him along to the hospital.”

Alexander had been about to haul himself to his feet, but instead he froze. He had forgotten about the biopsy in the hours since Rosemary had revealed it, his mind occupied with keeping Rosemary from killing snooty employees and keeping Doug in relatively good cheer. “Or perhaps I should take you to hospital, and Janie could stay with Doug.”

Rosemary settled her wig on its stand and laughed awkwardly. “I’d rather have Doug stay with someone he already knows, darling, not dump him on Janie right away.”

Alexander managed to get to his feet this time and crossed the room to Rosemary, wrapping his arms around her from behind and pressing a kiss behind her ear. “I would worry less.”

She waved him away so that she could remove her wig cap. “And I would worry more. I’ll be fine with Janie.”

“As long as you promise to tell me results when they come in.”

Rosemary stiffened in his arms. “Of course,” she said in a small, tight voice.

“Rosemary…”

“I’ll let you know if it’s anything to worry about. But you’ll be busy.”

She had hidden her illness from him entirely, the last time he had lived these years. He had come back from his first rotation in space to find her dying, had needed to force a conversation before she would admit even the fact that her cancer had developed to the point where it would be terminal in short order. Even lesser illnesses had been too much weakness for her to reveal; he still remembered her collapsing during one of Goddard’s Christmas parties, risking her health to put on a show of normalcy to the point where a chest cold had turned into pneumonia that left her bedridden for the better part of a month.

He wanted to yell at her, suddenly. Wanted to shout that he was her husband, that he was here because he wanted to know these things, whether he was busy or not.

But what right did he have to yell when he had failed at the most basic part of being her partner?

So instead, he pressed another kiss behind her ear. “I will look after Doug on Monday.”

Rosemary murmured a soft thanks and relaxed in his arms, and he cuddled her close a little bit longer before releasing her and going about his own nighttime routine. When they went to check on Doug, he had already clambered into his bed and had apparently gone out like a light the instant he was there.

A few minutes after that, they were in their own bed.

Alexander tried to sleep.

He could not.

The next day was a whirl of meetings, of quiet moments snatched in his lab, of follow-ups with the other scientists who would be working at the summer camp. He had been right, and so had Rosemary—he was going to be busy over the next month and a half.

Too busy, perhaps. His days would be taken up by the commitment he had made to the program; his nights would have to be spent in the lab, monitoring the latest Decima trial. Rosemary had offered to look in on the lab rats each day, and her help would be invaluable, but she had work of her own, and she would be managing Doug more-or-less on her own. Something he had never asked of her, but something she had taken on without question.

He did not know how to show her how much that meant to him.

On Monday, Alexander offered to keep an eye on Sam as well, an offer Janie accepted with alacrity. “I know she’s—he’s,” she corrected herself hastily, “he’s well old enough to stay on his own while I take Rosie to her appointment, but I’d feel better if he had an adult around.”

Across the room, Sam rolled his eyes, but kept most of his attention on Doug. Alexander hadn’t expected Sam to be good with kids, but he was thinking of adult Sam once more, not of a fourteen-year-old faced with a child half his age who was inclined to hang off of Sam’s every word. Sam was still caught on the prospect of life on other planets, and he had found a willing audience in Doug.

Rosemary bustled Janie out the door a moment later, waving a quick goodbye to Alexander, and he was on his own. Not that the boys seemed to be in any need of adult supervision at the moment; Doug was asking a million and one questions right now that Sam seemed more than happy to answer. Eventually, Doug went scrambling for his room and emerged with a pile of books that Alexander had not known about—how much shopping had Rosemary done the day before, anyway?—and the pair of them sat down over a large-format guide to local star systems, chattering excitedly and occasionally stopping to throw questions Alexander’s way.

They were so _interested._ Everything was new and shining and exciting to them, in a way it had not been for Alexander for a long, long time. He had a pile of papers at hand, work he had hoped to find a moment here or there to pick away at, but more often than not, he found himself distracted by Sam and Doug as they pored over the book, pointing interesting facts out to each other as they did.

Alexander missed that feeling. He had found something of it when he had first come to Goddard Futuristics, two and a half decades before, but the years since then had beat that excitement, that genuine interest in the world, from him. Eventually, he joined the boys on the floor, adding observations of his own from his knowledge of Goddard’s space exploration projects.

If some of that knowledge hadn’t been confirmed by the data yet, well. They were young. They would never notice.

Alexander was too busy explaining pulse-beacon relays to notice when Janie brought Rosemary home, and only looked up when he heard a light laugh from behind him. Rosemary had leaned herself against the back of the couch and was watching the three of them with a smile.

“Janie’s gone off to pick up some lunch,” she said when they turned to look at her, straightening up slowly and coming around the couch. Her movements were stiff and cautious, and she was wearing a pair of loose, baggy pants that she hadn’t left the house in. Alexander sprang to his feet and helped her lower herself to the couch. “Thank you, darling. Have you been keeping out of trouble?”

He frowned at her. “How was…?”

“They _do _need a little bit of time for lab tests.” Her eyes flicked past him to where both boys were still watching curiously. “Pizza for lunch sound good?”

Sam and Doug agreed, and then turned back to the book. Alexander sat on the couch next to Rosemary and took her hand in his. “I should have cooked something. I am sorry.”

“Nonsense.” She patted his hand with her free one. “It looks like you were far too busy to consider it.” She put her hand to her waist and adjusted the waistband of the pants, and then winced.

“You should not be in this much pain.”

“They had to stab me four times with the biggest damn needle I’ve ever seen. It was extremely unpleasant.”

Alexander frowned. “I thought you said there was only one mass.”

Rosemary shifted awkwardly and pulled her hand free from his, keeping her voice low, barely audible over the chatter from the boys. “They found a second while doing some imaging to find the first one. Smaller.”

“Rosemary…”

“They think they just missed it last time.” She appeared to force a smile onto her face. “You said I survive another seven years. It can’t be too malignant.”

_I want more than seven years with you_, he thought. Seven would not be enough. Not seven, not seventeen, not even twenty-seven.

But instead of putting a voice to that thought, he simply agreed.


	13. Chapter 13

Alexander hated being right about things sometimes. This one in particular, he resented; over the next few weeks, he had barely had time to spend with Doug, making sure the boy knew he was wanted here, and he and Rosemary had little more time alone together than a few minutes of conversation each night before dozing off. And Doug had been fractious and belligerent, fighting against any restriction they tried to put on him after his first few days with them, testing his limits and their patience.

Despite the fact that Doug had been a sudden addition to their household, Rosemary had apparently planned well enough beforehand that he slid right in to their routines. She had taken a few days of personal leave that first week Doug was there, citing a need for a recovery period from her medical procedure, and in that time she had arranged for a rotation of summer camps, a therapist, and for Janie to take Doug after the camps were over for the day when neither Rosemary nor Alexander was available to pick him up. “Though that might have to change in the fall,” Rosemary had added when explaining these arrangements to Alexander. “She wants to start studying for her GRE, and she’s hoping to go to college once that’s done. But until then I can pay her to look after Doug and know he’ll be in good hands.”

But finally, the start of the program was here, and with it a bit of a reprieve from the chaos. His life would become more structured, at least—half-days spent in the classroom, alternating mornings and afternoons, the rest of his time in his lab, trying to figure out what was happening with the current Decima trial. The rats had been lethargic and wheezy for some weeks for no reason he could determine, but they had yet to start dying, so he was hopeful it might lead to some advance now that he had a little more time to think about it.

That was something he could consider later; right now, families were arriving with their children, security members were coming to campus with campers who had travelled unaccompanied, and the entire campus was buzzing with excitement.

It was strange having so many outsiders on Goddard’s campus. People who weren’t employed by Goddard in some capacity had always been few and far between, mostly limited to outside press agents, and children had been even less common. Having sixty teenagers on campus, along with their accompanying adults, was overwhelming. Right now, everyone was packed into a small auditorium in the admin building, usually used for press briefings, all waiting to find out which of the habitats they would be living in for the next three weeks.

“Doug’s off at day camp.” Rosemary whispered, appearing at his side. “How’s it going in here?”

Alexander had not expected to see her until that evening. He let out a small hum of contentment and slipped his hand into hers, using his free hand to subtly point out Renée and Warren and Mace.

To Alexander’s relief, it had turned out that Mace’s parents were willing to send their son halfway across the world for an opportunity like this… though when Alexander had mentioned his surprise to Al, the man had laughed and said it was more likely that Mace was eating them out of house and home at the moment, and what they really appreciated was less the opportunity and more the chance put someone else in charge of feeding their growing giant of a son.

“Renée Minkowski,” Al called out.

“It’s pronounced—oh!” Renée had started speaking in the dull tone of those who were used to correcting mispronunciations of their name on a daily basis, only to realize two words in that Al had pronounced her last name correctly.

“You’re in habitat 5, bunk 2.”

“Thank you.” Renée still looked startled, and Alexander found himself hiding his laugh in a cough, for all that it was distressing that she already corrected people in such a way after less than a year in the United States.

Rosemary’s hand tensed in his. “Carter,” she mouthed, jerking her head towards the back entrance to the room. Alexander glanced over, frowning. Mr. Carter stood in the doorway, looking over the crowd with a little smile playing at the corners of his mouth. They both tensed as he sat down in an empty chair next to one of the children. Fortunately, not one of theirs, but…

Al finished the bunk assignments. “I’ve got a list up here for anyone who needs it, and we’ll be taking you over there shortly. But first we’ve got a little slide-show on Goddard Futuristics for you all—”

“I’ll be taking this, Al.” Carter got back to his feet and headed to the front of the room.

“Presented by William Carter, the head of Communications at Goddard Futuristics,” Al said smoothly, stepping back to a station beside the projector as if the move had been rehearsed.

The presentation was short and rote, simply a history of Goddard Futuristics to the current day. Mr. Carter’s showmanship, however, took it from rote to spectacular and left every face in the place riveted on him.

Rosemary let out a disgusted little snort.

“Hush, suka moya.”

“It’s just that he’s eating this up,” came her disgruntled response.

“Any questions?” Carter asked from the podium.

He took the questions with his usual showy aplomb, but as the question and answer session went on Rosemary slowly relaxed, and eventually started shaking with barely-suppressed laughter.

“Later,” she murmured as Alexander looked down at her curiously.

When Mr. Carter brought a sudden halt to the questions despite the lack of a fixed schedule for the afternoon and several still-raised hands, and fled the room immediately, Alexander suddenly understood. He stood there laughing at Rosemary’s side as Al announced that they would head on over to the habitats now and lead everyone else out of the auditorium.

“He was bored.”

Rosemary grinned up at him. “Oh, yes. To tears, or he would have been if that man knew how to cry.”

“I thought he loved attention.”

“But he hates stupid questions, even if those questions are quite clever coming from someone who doesn’t have as expansive a view of the world as he does. I think he’s forgotten what it’s like to be that young.” Rosemary paused, considering. “Or maybe he never knew. He strikes me as the type who had adults praising him as remarkable for things that are merely routine.”

Alexander let out a relieved sigh. “Hopefully he will, ah, what is phrase. Keep out of hair?”

A crack of laughter escaped Rosemary. “I _know_ you know that one. And probably, at least for a bit. Fortunately, this little project has bought us some _excellent_ press.” She tucked her arm through his and smiled up at him. “Shall we?”

“Da.” They made their way out into the humid afternoon, arm-in-arm, heading in the direction of the habitats. Rosemary’s presence reminded him that he still had not gotten a proper report from her about the biopsy, other than her claiming it was nothing to worry about; perhaps if he spoke with her while the campers were moving in to the habitats, he could get a straight answer from her if he worked her around to it. “It is good to see you. I did not think you were planning to come to opening ceremony.”

He caught a swift little motion out of the corner of his eye, of Rosemary biting into her lower lip nervously. “I got a call from Ric this morning.”

So she wasn’t there for him. He scoured his long-ago memory of her file for the name, forgetting his resolution to ask about the biopsy results entirely. “Your son?”

“My ex-husband.”

Those words knocked the air out of Alexander’s lungs, made the breath seize in his throat. Oh, he knew the circumstances of her previous marriage, knew that this Ric was no rival for Rosemary’s affections—not that Alexander seemed to have her affections for himself—but there was something about those words that cut him to the core.

Rosemary pulled away from him, removing her arm from where it was tucked through his. “Anyway, we’ve talked on the phone over the years, but I haven’t seen him in person since I was twenty, and I just... we’re both getting on, you know, and I wanted to see him again before it’s too late.” She was babbling, just a little, the words pouring out of her at a nervous, frantic pace. “And I just want...” she trailed off and sighed.

“Perhaps you wish to make peace with your past.” The words slipped out before Alexander had realized he intended to say them, and the little nod Rosemary gave him in response to them left him hopeful. Perhaps if she put her past to rest, he might be able to convince her to build a future with him in truth.

“I’d like to try, at least,” Rosemary said with an awkward little laugh.

Alexander reached for her and took her hand in his once more, squeezing it gently. “I will be here, if you find that you cannot.”

“_You_ will be too busy to think for the next month, so don’t you worry about me for one second,” Rosemary shot back, suddenly brisk and withdrawn as she tugged her hand free from his. “I think that might be him.” She pointed at a handsome old Latino man, straight-backed and silver-haired, standing outside of one of the habitats. “Wish me luck?”

“Good luck,” Alexander said to her back, as Rosemary did not wait for an answer before crossing the field to the man’s side. The man she had pointed out must have been Ric; he turned to Rosemary with a start of recognition when she reached his side. Alexander was too far away to hear them, but it did not seem to be going well. They were stiff and cautious with one another, and Alexander prepared to go rescue Rosemary from a conversation that was clearly too awkward to be borne.

And then, in an instant, everything changed, and the pair of them were smiling at one another like old friends.

No, not like old friends. They were smiling at one another like family.

Alexander could not bring himself to keep watching. He felt his breath seize in his throat again and tried to turn away. But no, he could not do that either. Some perversity of his mind made him watch as Ric offered Rosemary his hand, as Rosemary, after a moment of hesitation, took it, as the pair of them disappeared into one of the habitats.

Oh, he could not bear this. He turned away, letting his gaze slide across the other habitats, blinking hard. Focus on the task before him. The next few weeks would be a challenge unlike any other he had ever undertaken. Not his first time teaching, of course; he had helped teach a few courses for undergraduate students while working on his doctorates. But he had only fulfilled those duties because he had been required to. He had not actually cared about them.

This, he actually cared about.

A flash of bright teal in his peripheral vision, and Rosemary was at his side. “Karl, darling. This is Ric.”

The man was even more handsome at close range, and Alexander had to fight to keep his hand steady as he offered it up to shake. “Good to meet the new model,” Ric said with a self-deprecating little smile as he shook Alexander’s hand firmly.

Rosemary rolled her eyes and batted Ric playfully on the arm with an open palm. “Oh, stop teasing the poor man. You’re horrible.” She stepped in close to Alexander as Ric stepped back and lifted herself onto her toes to brush a kiss against Alexander’s cheek. “We’re going for coffee. I’ll see you tonight?”

Alexander could not find his voice, so he simply nodded. Rosemary grinned and tucked her arm through Ric’s, leading him away in the direction of the cafeteria. It was only when Ric turned his head and gave Alexander a curious look over his shoulder that Alexander realized he was glaring at the other man.

The front of a ridiculously large suit jacket appeared in front of him, blocking off Alexander’s view of Rosemary and Ric. He attempted to step to one side, and a pair of massive hands came down on his shoulders next, holding him in place.

“I just want to be certain that she will be safe with him,” Alexander said. “Let me go, Al.”

“He’s seventy-three and he’s as gay as a maypole,” Al said conversationally. “I doubt he’s capable of doin’ a damn thing to Rosie that she doesn’t want him to, and she don’t want anything from him other than a conversation, and maybe a little bit of closure besides.”

Alexander sighed and deflated, his forehead coming to rest against the front of Al’s jacket for a moment. “I do not like that man.”

“From what I saw, you barely even met that man.” Al patted Alexander on the top of his head and then swung him around so that he was facing the habitats once more, Al’s massive arm across his shoulders. “You just don’t like the fact that Rosie had a past even before you came along.”

Alexander let out a low, strained noise. “I do not care that she has a past. All I want is her _future._” And then he froze. He had not yet confessed such a thing to Rosemary; why was he now admitting it to Al?

“Huh.” A simple exhale of breath, but a disturbing noise where Al was concerned. Before the wedding, Al had stolen Alexander away from the lab for a day, had taken him shopping for a suit, and then, without Alexander realizing it until they were deep into it, Al had slowly and carefully interrogated Alexander about his intentions. He had suspected at the time that he had passed whatever test Al had laid before him that day, but he remembered that sound, and what sort of questions followed it, careful, drawling questions that had teased out of Alexander a confession that he would do anything to see Rosemary survive the illness that had killed her the last time he had lived these years.

“You know,” Al began, in his slow, drawling way. “I think I might need to kick your ass, if you haven’t been takin’ care of her well enough she feels she can trust you with her future.”

“And I would deserve it,” Alexander said darkly. “I have done everything in the wrong order.”

“Still time to fix it.”

“I know.” But even as he said those words, he could not bring himself to believe them.

“Just keep that in mind.”

“I will.”

Alexander did not make it home for dinner that night. He could have. Perhaps he should have. But instead, once freed from his obligation to the camp, he returned to his lab and threw himself into work. Anything to forget Rosemary’s face, as she smiled up at Ric. Anything to forget the fact that she still withdrew from him sometimes, anything to forget the fact that she was being cagey with the results of her biopsy, anything to forget the fact that he had no idea how she really felt about him.

It was well past midnight when he returned home. Doug did not stir when Alexander glanced into his room to check on him, but Rosemary woke as Alexander clambered into bed at her side.

“It’s late.”

“I am sorry for waking you.” There was an expectant silence from Rosemary, so he continued with a lie. “I had idea. For latest Decima trial.”

“Oh.” Rosemary shifted, rolling onto her side, her back to Alexander. “Any progress?”

Alexander shook his head, despite the fact that she would not have been able to see the small motion in the dark of their bedroom, even if she had been facing him. “No.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Do not be. You do not have to coddle me, Rosemary. I can cope with my own failures.”

“Who said I was coddling you?” she shot back irritably.

“Go back to sleep.”

“Fine.” But instead of the sound of her whispery snore, there was only resentful silence from Rosemary’s side of the bed.

“I will sleep in guest bedroom if I come home late again,” Alexander said, hating himself for saying the words. “So as not to wake you.”

The silence turned frigid. He heard Rosemary swallow hard, heard her take a deep breath, as if she were about to shout. But all she said was “If it would make you feel better,” in a small, dead-sounding voice.

It would not.

But he could not bring himself to say it, and the next night, when he came home to find the door to the master bedroom shut and sheets on the guest bed, all he could assume was that Rosemary preferred things to be like this, for now.

He would try to accept it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rosemary's conversation with Ric can be found [here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247292/chapters/54670138)


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Self-indulgent nonsense, aka a brief report on the summer program, Rosemary begins cancer treatment, and Hilbert finally fucking makes a choice between this version of his life and Decima.

Alexander had needed to prepare himself to not single out his future former crew mates, had steeled himself thoroughly against bringing attention to them. For all that he wanted them to learn what they would need to know to survive the possible futures in front of them, there was also a great deal of danger in bringing them to Goddard Futuristics, a danger only emphasized by William Carter’s appearance at the opening ceremony. And as much as Rosemary had seemed to think that the man’s boredom would keep him away from the program, Alexander could not help but worry.

Still... still. He did what he could. If someone mispronounced Minkowski in front of him, he offered up correction before Renée was forced to herself; if someone made fun of her accent he emphasized his own as he dressed down the offenders. And, of course, he tried to push them together, as subtly as he could manage.

Mace and Sam were easy enough; they had been assigned bunkmates without Alexander’s intervention, and Mace was easy-going, even as a child. Two weeks into the program and the boys were fast friends despite the two year age difference. And it had not taken much either to bring Renée into the fold; Alexander had simply had to ask Sam to keep an eye out for Renée, with a word or two to Sam that it must be difficult, being so new to this country, and that Renée could probably use a friend who wouldn’t make fun of her for her accent.

Warren Kepler, on the other hand… it was far more difficult to figure out what to do with him. It wasn’t that he seemed to be picking fights, or if he was they could not prove it. Instead, it seemed that he manipulated others into picking fights with him, only to play the victim when confronted, claiming that they had misunderstood something he had said. But try as he might, Alexander could not bring himself to be too concerned with finding some redeeming value in Warren Kepler, even if that man was barely a teenager in this time. He would leave that to Al, or Sterling, or some other staff member with more patience and less history.

And Alexander had other concerns.

Alexander only taught for half of each day, but even so, he had needed to return to his lab each evening to keep abreast of the rest of his work, to keep an eye on this Decima trial, which was still failing to produce conclusive results. He tried to make it home for dinner for Doug’s sake. For Rosemary’s as well, for all that she did not seem to care one way or the other. But some nights he had hardly enough energy to do more than eat silently and offer up monosyllabic commentary on Rosemary and Doug’s chatter about their days, and paying attention was beyond him.

He should have tried harder to pay attention.

It had been a busy day, a frantic one. The rats from the latest Decima trial had begun to die off, their immune systems weakened, but no apparent progression or mutation of the retrovirus they carried. Today had been especially bad, with one or two new dead rats each time he ducked into his lab between classes to give his lab techs new orders, but it was clear that no matter what they did, this trial would soon come to an end whether he wanted it to or not.

He almost did not go home for dinner.

He thought later that he would have regretted it if he had not.

The house had been silent when he had come home. Rosemary wasn’t a good cook, but she had somehow managed the miracle of having a meal of some sort on the table every night since the program had started, even if it was take-out of some kind. He thought sometimes that he did not deserve such kindness from her. But tonight, he did not come home to the smell of food and the back-and-forth chatter of Rosemary and Doug.

He frowned at the silence of the house, listening. Her little red Bug had been in the driveway when he had pulled in, driving the nondescript compact car he had purchased when it had become clear their household would need two vehicles. She had to be home.

There. His ear caught the low hum of the television, and he followed it to what Rosemary called the rec room at the back of the house. The first thing he saw was Doug, curled up on the chair opposite the doorway, apparently dozing.

And then he glanced at the couch, and there was Rosemary.

She was wearing an oversized t-shirt and loose pants, and was and laying flat on her back, eyes shut, brow furrowed in what he thought was pain. One arm was wrapped around her middle and the other was stretched flat at her side. And there, just visible under the sleeve, in the crook of her elbow, was a large waterproof bandage.

_It cannot be_, he told himself.

He did not believe himself.

When he glanced back at Doug, the boy’s eyes were open. Alexander crossed the room to turn off the television and put his finger to his lips, jerking his head in Rosemary’s direction and then offering a hand to Doug. Doug seemed to understand what Alexander was getting at; he slid off the chair and tip-toed out of the room behind Alexander, following him to the kitchen.

“Have you eaten dinner?”

“No.” Doug’s voice was quiet, restrained, and his body language was too. Alexander regretted, suddenly, the fact that he had not made the time he should have to spend time with Doug over these past few weeks. Dinners and breakfasts were clearly not enough.

“I will find something for us to eat.”

There was little in the fridge, but the freezer contained several microwavable meals. Alexander gave Doug his pick of them, heated a second for himself, for all that he was not sure he would be able to eat.

How long had she been hiding this from him?

“Rosemary’s really sick, isn’t she?” Doug’s voice interrupted Alexander’s train of thought, small and anxious, and Alexander wanted to reassure him.

He could not. “I do not know.”

From the expression on Doug’s face, this wasn’t an acceptable answer in the slightest. “How can you not know?” he asked petulantly.

Another question Alexander could not answer in an acceptable way. He opened his mouth to try, and could not even bring himself to attempt a kind lie.

“She’s going to die, isn’t she. She’s going to die, and I’m going to have to go back.” Doug’s voice cracked on the last word, and tears started pouring silently down his cheeks. Alexander got up and pried the fork Doug was still clutching out of his hand before crouching down next to his chair and pulling Doug into a hug, stroking Doug’s curls gently as the boy buried his face against Alexander’s shoulder.

“I promise you will not go back. Even if something happens to Rosemary, I promise I will be here.” He would have to change his entire life once more to make it work, but he would be. “And I will find out what is wrong with Rosemary. And I will make sure nothing happens to her.”

Doug was still sniveling against Alexander’s shoulder, a sign that the tears had stopped but the emotions that had caused the tears were still present and threatening more. Alexander did not know how to fix this.

He started talking, softly, gently, just to keep some noise in the air, not sure he should say these words, not sure Doug was old enough to understand. “You are important, Doug. Rosemary and I got married so that we could bring you home, because getting you away from that place was important. And we did not do a good job of discussing how things would be when you got here, but that is not your fault. Because having you here and safe was more important than us having everything perfect, you understand?”

Doug nodded hesitantly against Alexander’s shoulder.

“Just understand that. Rosemary and I were friends before we got married, but we have not been living together long. And the fact that we still do not know how to live together is not your fault. We want you here.”

“Okay.” Doug’s small body was no longer trembling, and Alexander released him, helping him hop back into his chair, though Alexander remained crouched on the floor next to Doug’s chair.

“If it is all right with you, I am going to call Janie and see if she will take you for the night and bring you to your camp tomorrow morning.”

Doug looked uncertain. “Why?”

“Because I need to have a very serious discussion with Rosemary, and I do not want you to have to hear it if I must yell at her to get her to listen to my concerns.”

Doug swallowed hard and nodded. “Don’t yell at her a lot, okay? I don’t think she feels very good.”

“I will only yell a little bit. I promise.” Alexander patted Doug on the shoulder and stood up. “Finish your dinner. I am going to go call Janie.”

Janie was happy to take Doug home with her for the night. “I’m missing Sam. It’s the first time he’s been away from home this long, and I...” Janie’s voice choked off into silence, and Alexander thought she must have been remembering the years where she had kept her son close because that was the only way to protect him from the man who had, at least in the eyes of the law, been Sam’s father. “I know he’s fine, and it’s not like he’s far away. But I need something to take my mind off it. I’ll be right over.”

Alexander went to Doug’s bedroom next, finding a change of clothing and a backpack to put it in. Doug caught up with him in the bathroom and helped him find the little case of toiletries Rosemary must have purchased at some point or another.

“I picked out the right clothing?” Alexander asked, showing Doug the contents of the backpack.

“I want a different shirt. And you forgot pajamas,” Doug said bossily, taking the backpack away and slinging it over his shoulder, heading back towards his bedroom. Alexander trailed along in his wake, bemused. There was something of Rosemary in that bossiness. It was clear that she had rubbed off on Doug in the weeks since they had brought him home.

Fifteen minutes later, Doug was equipped with what he needed for the next day and was heading out the door with Janie. Alexander stooped to hug Doug one last time before he went.

And then, he was alone in the house with Rosemary.

He returned to the living room, knelt by the couch she was asleep on, just watching her for a moment. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t moved at all, not reacting to the sounds and smells of the dinner he and Doug had eaten or to the bustle of Doug getting ready to leave the house. Her chest rose and fell, swift, shallow breaths, and there in the crook of the arm that lay flat at her side was the bandage that he suspected covered the access port to a recently installed PICC line, still peeking out from under the sleeve of her overlarge t-shirt.

He rested his fingers against her wrist, finding her pulse, timing it against his watch. A little sluggish, but not unusually so for a body at rest.

There was a little rustle of clothing as Rosemary stirred and woke, finally reacting to the touch of his fingers on her. She blinked several times at the ceiling, obviously disoriented, before turning her head to squint in his direction. “Sasha? That you?” she asked in a muzzy voice.

“Yes.” Alexander dropped the hand that had been checking her pulse to his lap. “I notice you have a PICC line installed.”

“Oh, that.” Rosemary waggled the fingers of her other hand dismissively from where it was draped across her stomach, not bothering to deny it even as she made light of it.

“You said that there was nothing to worry about after the biopsy.”

“Mm.” She shut her eyes again, obviously planning to ignore his implied question. “Where’s Doug? Last I remember he was in here watching tv.”

Alexander sighed. She really was disoriented. “Not in house.”

“Who is he with?”

“Adriane,” Alexander said drily.

At that, Rosemary startled the rest of the way awake, her eyes opening wide. “Don’t even joke about that.”

“Something to imagine, yes?” Alexander let the corner of his mouth twitch upwards in a smile he didn’t feel. “Doug is with Janie.”

“Thank goodness.” Rosemary shifted her shoulders back and forth, clearly getting more comfortable on the couch. “I don’t think Adriane would harm him, but...”

“She is not, ah, equipped for caring for a child,” Alexander completed for her.

Rosemary let out a little laugh that sounded like it hurt her, but didn’t comment further. Alexander reached up and laid his hand over hers.

“Tell me, suka.”

Rosemary simply looked at him for a long, quiet moment, and Alexander did his best to make it obvious he wasn’t giving up. Finally, she spoke. “They’re cancerous, of course. But my oncologist thinks they’re the textbook definition of treatable.”

“And the treatment?” He prompted her when she seemed reluctant to continue.

“A course of chemotherapy. And then they’ll operate. This fall.”

He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. “Why did you not tell me?”

She turned her gaze to the ceiling. “Because it’s treatable. Because I didn’t want you worrying.” Her voice sounded as if she were about to cry, but it was clear that no tears were coming. “Because you’ve been too busy to worry about yourself.”

“Is this why you moved my clothing to the guest room? So that I would not see this?” He brushed his fingers up her arm, against the edge of the bandage. It had stung, coming into the house late that second night of the program to find his clothing stacked neatly on the end of the guest bed. But if Rosemary had been trying to keep this from him…

“I didn’t want you disturbing what little sleep you were getting by having to deal with my crankiness.” Rosemary shut her eyes and sighed. “I really don’t want to talk about this right now. Don’t you have to go back to work tonight?”

He should. He did not want to, but if he did not… he was running out of time to collect data on this most recent strain of Decima. “I will see to it that you eat something first.”

Rosemary made a face. “I couldn’t even keep down juice earlier.”

“We will try again.” Alexander raised his eyebrows in warning. “I will not return to lab until you have eaten something.”

“You’ll be here all night,” Rosemary said in low, urgent protest.

He turned his energy towards coaxing her upright. “Crackers. We must have crackers in house, yes? And I know I saw juice in the refrigerator.”

In the end, he managed to get half a sleeve of Saltines down her, along with a cup of grape juice. He suspected it wasn’t enough, but she was awake and back on her feet now, and seemed to have regained some of her usual energy, and he had to hope that would be good enough for now.

“I will be back as soon as I can,” he told her as she shooed him out of the house.

She rolled her eyes at him. “You’ll be back after midnight, if at all. I’ve been reading your reports.”

Alexander frowned. “That is not your job any more.”

She dismissed his concern with a wave of her hand. “Yes, well, I like to keep my hand in. Now get back to work.”

Alexander sighed and went.

When he got into the lab to discover every last rat had apparently succumbed to the same weakness that had begun picking them off earlier that week, he could not even bring himself to be surprised.

He was not even sure he could bring himself to care.

Alexander froze, considering that train of thought. A decade ago, this would have mattered. Would have consumed his days and nights until he teased out the cause, until he understood what had gone wrong, until he had determined some approach that might fix the problem.

But right now? Right now all he wanted to do was go home to his wife, to try and make his amends to her before this distance between them became impassable. To do what Al had told him, and make sure she knew she could trust him with her future, no matter what actions it took to convince her of it.

When had this life he was living now begun to matter more than his work?

No. Decima was important. Decima would change the world, he knew it would.

Even as he thought those words, they failed him, as Decima had failed time and time again. Decima might, some day, live up to its promise, the way it had started to before his death. But along the way, Decima had killed so many people. He had been willing to accept it, then. The wages of progress, he had considered it.

Alexander imagined a Decima that almost worked. The Decima he had taken to Hephaestus Station the first time, the Decima that had been living in Mace Fisher, that had eventually killed Sam Lambert and Kuan Hui, that had started killing Victoire Fourier when, to his shock, the method of transmission had changed. It had no longer needed him to propagate it, that version of Decima, and he had destroyed every sample, had pumped himself full of antivirals and had tried to do the same to Isabel Lovelace, would have done the same to Isabel if she hadn’t attacked him. It had been contained, there. What if he could not avoid that, here on earth? What if he had to watch Rosemary’s death once again? What if this time, he could not keep Doug Eiffel alive?

What if _none of this _mattered, the work he was doing here? What if the only way to progress was all that death once more?

None of this mattered to him any more.

He wanted to laugh. He wanted to _scream._

Instead, he very carefully and deliberately gathered up every sample, every culture, every dead rat, and placed them in the incinerator in his lab.

He stared at the closed door of the incinerator for a very, very long time. Could he do it?

But if he did not destroy this last vestige of what he had been, how could he live _this_ life?

He rallied his thoughts, decided what he would tell Mr. Carter, when eventually that man called him to account for what he was about to do. He could easily claim at this point that Decima would never be ready for testing in humans, that he intended to begin again with a new viral strain. Alexander had long suspected that the only reason Carter knew anything of the promise of Dmitri Vologin’s work was because Rosemary had drawn Carter’s attention to it, and after what Rosemary had said this afternoon, he was beginning to suspect that his new lab manager still relied heavily on Rosemary to translate his work for the outside world. The lie would work, he was certain. Or at least it would work on everyone but Rosemary, and she would back him.

And after all, he was still a genius virologist. Goddard Futuristics would never run out of work for him.

He pressed the button to ignite the samples with hardly a twinge of regret.

Rosemary was in bed when he got home, but still awake, sitting propped up on a pile of pillows with a pair of horrifyingly orange reading glasses perched on her nose and a pen in hand as she read her way through a binder-clipped stack of paper. Alexander paused in the doorway of the master bedroom, watching her, a swell of fondness making it hard for him to breathe.

She scribbled a note and glanced up, raising an eyebrow. “You did make it home early,” she said, her voice cool and distant. A protective measure, he suspected.

He nodded. “All of the rats are dead. And I would rather be here than in my lab, finishing off report.”

Her face softened, just a little. “I’m sure the next trial will go better.”

“It cannot go worse.” It would not go at all, but he was not ready to tell her that yet. “May I sleep in here tonight?”

Rosemary looked hesitant. “I’m not up for anything too vigorous.”

Alexander shook his head. “I just want to sleep next to my wife again,” he said softly. “I have missed her.”

Rosemary’s face crumpled, though no tears came out. Alexander crossed the room and sat on the bed at her side, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and tucking her close against him.

“I am sorry,” he said softly, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I have not been a very good partner.”

“It’s all right,” Rosemary said, her voice thick with unspoken pain. “I’m not very good at this either.”

“I am going to be better,” he promised hoarsely.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

She would not believe him if he told her that nothing would prevent him from keeping this promise, so instead he simply coaxed her into giving up her pile of papers and the pen and those appalling reading glasses, teased her until he got a proper smile from her, not one of the flashy fakes she so often passed off as the real thing.

And for tonight, that was enough.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lunch with the kids and old people grudgingly admitting they're in love.

The next few days brought a chance to observe other classes at the summer camp and to spend time with the students outside of classes, both activities Alexander had not had time for since the program had started. And there was something strangely delightful about being in a room full of teenagers who all wanted to grow up to be astronauts. Right now, he was standing in the middle of the on-campus cafeteria, which was full to the brim with program participants and buzzing with their conversation.

“Uncle Karl!” Sam’s hand flew up from a few tables away and waved him over. Alexander made his way to the table and found Sam, along with Renée, Mace, and...

It turned out Rosemary wasn’t the only one slightly discomfited by the proximity of her past. Alexander found himself ushered into an open seat across the table from one Rosamaria Herrera and intensely uncomfortable with the situation, especially when the girl shot him a smile that was distressingly like her grandmother’s.

And he wasn’t going to be able to escape that discomfort. “You’re my Aunt Rosie’s husband, right?” the girl asked, lifting her chin in a familiar combative pose.

Alexander was so startled that he answered before he could think better of it. “Yes.”

Rosamaria nudged Sam with her shoulder. “See. I told you we’re like cousins.”

“We’re not _related_,” Sam protested. “He’s not _really_ my uncle, you know.”

Alexander buried his snort of laughter in a paper napkin.

“Yeah, but I don’t have any cousins, and I’ve always wanted one. So you’re my cousin now.” Rosamaria clapped her hand on Sam’s shoulder.

“Stoppit, Ria,” Sam said, rolling his eyes and scuffling back with her. Alexander wondered, for a moment, if he should step in, but this seemed to be a playful mock-fight of the sort he remembered having with his sister, back when Olga had still been alive and still well enough to engage in such play.

“Hey!” Renée rapped on the table between them, startling them out of their squabbling. “We’ve got a teacher here,” she said, with a cautious glance at Alexander.

“Oh, do not stop on my account,” Alexander said, poking morosely at the mound of rice and vegetables on his plate. The food provided in the on-campus cafeteria had always walked the line between edible and not, but it seemed to have taken a steep nosedive with the summer program on campus. Not that any of the teenagers at the table seemed to mind; all of them had cleared their plates, and as Alexander poked at his own food, Mace pushed to his feet with a mutter that he was going back for seconds. “You are all enjoying the program?”

Sam burst out into a stream of excited chatter about his favorite bits so far, accompanied by interjections from Ria and Renée. Mace simply focused on plowing through his second full plate of food with the intent look of a pre-teen boy who was about to hit his first growth spurt and only cared about getting as many calories into his body as his stomach could contain. The entire situation filled Alexander with a warm glow of excitement for what the future might hold for all of them. For the first time since Rosemary had proposed this crazy idea, Alexander was starting to feel like everything might turn out all right. Like this had been the correct choice, bringing these people together now and here, like it wasn’t the mistake of a lifetime giving William Carter a chance to influence them so young.

Everything might turn out all right, in the end.

Or perhaps not. Alexander had hoped to have a few more days before someone discovered what he had done to Decima. Had hoped, but when he opened the door to his lab later that afternoon and found Rosemary leaning against one of the tables across the room, he realized that hope was in vain.

She glanced over her shoulder at him and then turned her attention back to the rack of empty cages in front of her. “You know, I didn’t believe Aditi when she said everything was cleaned out.”

Alexander swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump in his throat, and started across the room towards her.

“I thought she meant that you had, I don’t know, managed to stick all your rats in the back of the wrong freezer, or had misplaced your samples again,” she continued in a preternaturally calm voice, shooting him a sideways look when he came to a halt at her side. “I didn’t think you’d decided to fucking incinerate a lifetime’s worth of work.”

Alexander jerked backwards from her at the sudden vitriol in her voice. “Rosemary, please, I can explain...”

“Can you?” She turned to him, a frown digging a deep furrow between her eyebrows. “Decima is why Dmitri Vologin is here and not still laboring away in some cut-rate Russian lab. Carter knew he couldn’t get the virus without the man.”

“I think I have proven my worth,” Alexander said stiffly.

She raised her eyebrows. “Have you? Because I’m not so certain that Carter will see it that way.” She shut her eyes, looking exhausted. “_God. _What a fucking mess you’ve made of things.”

“It killed you,” he said, desperate to make her understand. “It killed you, and it killed Sam and Kuan, and it almost killed Doug, last time. I cannot bear the thought of facing those deaths once more, you understand?”

Rosemary let out a low, pained chuckle and shook her head. “That’s not a good enough reason to destroy it.”

It was all he had. “I will not watch you die that way again. I cannot...” he let out a low hiss of breath. “I will not allow it.”

Rosemary gave him an extremely peculiar look that he could not read. “We all die some day, darling.”

“I refuse to allow for even the chance of it happening that way again. Not to you.” That lump was back in his throat, making it hard to breathe. “I love you,” he said, and the words came out wrecked and broken in a mouth that could barely shape them. “I love you,” he said again, and took what comfort he could in saying the words out loud, even if he would never hear them back from her.

He heard Rosemary’s breath catch in her throat, watched her jerk her head around to stare at the empty cages once more. “I think I need to sit down,” was all she said. She pushed off the table, took one tottering step... and then collapsed to the floor. Not a faint, but as if her knees had given out beneath her.

That didn’t stop Alexander from dropping to his knees at her side, a cry of dismay caught in his throat. But when he reached for her she put a hand to his chest, pushing him away.

“I’m very angry with you right now,” she said.

“That is fine.” Alexander sank into a sitting position at her side and waited.

She turned a glare on him. “Did you just think, ‘oh, Rosemary will be able to fix it?’ while you were doing this? Or did you even think at all?”

Alexander flushed. Too close to what his mental state had been the other night. “I had hoped to be able to resolve it without relying too heavily on you,” he said stiffly.

“But you did intend to rely on me,” she said dully. “_God._”

“I never intended to be a burden.” But he had turned into one, hadn’t he. Despite his best intentions, all he was to her was another burden to be borne.

“I wish you’d discussed it with me before taking such a drastic step.” She sounded very tired, and it took all of Alexander’s willpower not to reach for her again. He wanted to fold her against his chest and keep her safe, and knew at the same time that she would never accept such an offer from him even if he were capable of keeping her as safe as he wanted her.

“I suspect I went a little mad the other night,” was all he said in response. He shifted around, sitting directly on the floor of his lab so that he could pull his knees to his chest. He shoved his glasses to his forehead and shut his eyes and let his face fall against his knees, some far off part of him enjoying the fact that this version of his body was still young enough for him to be comfortable in such a position. Well. It was the only thing he was enjoying about this.

Rosemary sighed. After a moment there was a slight pressure against his shoulder and the brush of her wig against his neck, followed by the warmth of her arm against his back as she wrapped it around him. Even now, under these circumstances, she was the one comforting him. “I think the person I’m angriest with is myself,” she said, her voice hoarse with unshed tears. “Why I couldn’t fall in love with someone who has a bare minimum of common sense, I’ll never know.”

Alexander froze, tension thrumming through his body. “Rosemary?”

She lifted her head from his shoulder, and he lifted his from his knees, turning to study her face, so close to his. “You heard me,” she muttered. A blush darkened her cheeks and she refused to look at him.

“I would like to hear the words, all the same.”

Her eyes darted up to his and away, then back again before they caught and held. “I love you. You happy now?”

Happy was not the right word for it. Just at this moment Alexander felt as if he could fight the world.

And he might have to. William Carter was a difficult man to deal with, and had enough resources at his fingertips that fighting against him might as well be going up against the whole world. But right now, it didn’t matter, because Rosemary had just told Alexander that she loved him.

“Yes.” He found he was smiling and could not stop. “Did I tell you that I love you?”

Rosemary rolled her eyes and pulled away from him. “You might have mentioned it a time or two, yes.”

“Good.” And he still could not stop smiling. “I love you.”

Rosemary shot him a stricken look. “Don’t wear the words out, darling.”

“I do not think they will ever get old.” He intended to never let them. “I think I have been waiting to say them for decades, even if I never knew it. I will not get tired of them any time soon.”

Her face softened a little at that, and she leaned close again, her shoulder brushing his. “I don’t have those decades, you know.”

“I know.” He swallowed hard. “This time you will.”

She turned away, staring at a far corner of the lab. “You can’t promise that. You know you can’t.”

“Then I will tell you that I love you for as many of those years as we have.”

“Well.” She turned back to him, her expression determined. “Let’s figure out how to not get you killed by William Carter first, and go from there.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Way They Loved](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247292) by [ssrhpurgatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory)


End file.
